ankle deep
by wren and alma
Summary: Solving the problem of Ferelden, one civil disagreement at a time. — Elissa/Cailan, Alistair/Bethany.
1. am i a black stain on your perfect life

**disclaimer** : disclaimed.  
 **dedication** : look, sometimes you just gotta write an au of your au so that you don't crawl into a hole and die, and that's what we did  
 **notes** : we actually have this finished.

 **chapter title** : am i the black stain on your perfect life  
 **summary** : Solving the problem of Ferelden, one civil disagreement at a time. — Elissa/Cailan, Alistair/Bethany.

—

.

.

.

.

.

The message comes at the worst possible time.

Cailan runs his hands over his face, and rereads it again.

 _Effective immediately, Highever no longer stands with Ferelden_ —

Maker, he can't even look at the words. Highever, attacked? Highever, _fallen_? Teryn Cousland, dead in an attempted coup? He'd known the tensions were getting out of hand, but he never thought…

He has no idea what he's going to do.

The royal enclave isn't really set up for privacy. Tent walls are thin. There's something screaming in his chest, and any other day he'd let the sound tear out of his lungs, but right now he _can't_ , because on the other side of the gorge are an army of darkspawn. The Korcari Wilds are _teeming_ with the things, and the Wardens have come out of the woodwork. The word _Archdemon's_ left a bitter taste in the King's mouth.

Ostagar was meant to be his tomb.

And now—now it can't be. Because on top of everything else, on top of the darkspawn, on top of Anora's letter, on top of seeing his own face mirrored back at him across the camp—now there's this.

Maker, he needs to talk to Duncan.

Cailan doesn't bother to put on his armour. There are more important things to worry about, right now.

Duncan chose the location of his fire well. He can see most entrances into the camp, and has a good line of sight on the kennels, the mages, and most importantly, the royal enclave. Which is why he is the first to notice a very disheveled King Cailan marching out of his tent with a letter in his hand and a violent storm brewing in his body.

And things were going so well.

"Your Majesty, what's happened?" Duncan says. There's no reason to dress it up with politeness, nothing more than the title offers. If the nug shit is about to go everywhere, best get it over with. "Should I wake Teryn Loghain?"

"I—yes, no, wait, hold on," Cailan shakes a little, holds the missive out. "Read this, first."

The dark green crest of Highever glares up from the letterhead. This is going to be bad, that much he knows. The journey from the Brecillian to Orzammar and back to Ostagar revealed so many fractures in Ferelden's foundations. In all honesty, Duncan's surprised the country has survived this long post-occupation.

 _Effective immediately, Highever no longer stands with Ferelden. Our men prepared to join yours at Ostagar, and while they prepared to leave, someone dared betray that trust. My father, Teryn Bryce, lays dead. We have patiently dealt with problems in the Bannorn and in Gwaren both in the wake of their abandonment by Ferelden, despite neither being under our control. Denerim's incompetence can no longer be tolerated. Highever hereby severs her ties with Ferelden. We stand a Free City once more._

The signature at the bottom is an angry flourish that reads _Elissa Cousland_.

"This isn't from Teryna Eleanor," but it's a pointless observation. That's the right letterhead, and the seal at the bottom is correct. This letter is legitimate. Duncan sighs. "So it's to be a civil war, then?"

"I don't—how did it get to this?" Cailan asks, very quietly. "I've made a mess of it, the whole thing. What… what do I do?"

"You can start by not thinking this is your fault," Duncan says, still staring at the letter. "This started with the end of the occupation. It's your father's fault for not clearing it up when there was still a chance to."

"I should have been able to, I let Anora deal with it, and now even she's—" Cailan stops, clenches his jaw, breathes out. "But it doesn't matter."

"I hate to be the one to break this to you, Your Majesty, but Queen Anora is part of the problem," he sighs, heaviness in his bones. He promised Fiona he'd keep an eye on Alistair, but he never made any such deal for this one. And this is the one who had to deal with Maric, poor boy. Not for the first time, Duncan thinks it should have been Maric who faded to the sickness, not Queen Rowan. "If you wanted to avoid this, you would have had to remove Teryn Loghain from power and never married his daughter. Even then, I cannot guarantee you wouldn't be facing similar issues. Highever has always been more powerful than Denerim."

Cailan's shoulders slump. He _knows_ that marrying Anora was a bad idea; he knew it when they first got married, and it's been a steady decline ever since. They used to be friends—he can't say they're friends, anymore. And he doesn't want to say that Duncan's right, but _of course_ Duncan's right. This has been brewing for a very long time, and he'd gotten so good at pretending it wasn't there, he'd almost thought it would have gone away entirely.

"I have to go," Cailan says, "don't I."

"Yes, you do," Duncan says. "I can have a party arranged for first light, unless you would like to leave sooner."

"I should go on my own," he mutters, but it's petulant and he knows it's pointless because Duncan's always seen right through his dramatics. And so, a little louder, Cailan says, "First light is fine. Duncan… thank you."

"If you go alone, you will die and Ferelden will perish with you," Duncan says, dryly. "You'll need a Grey Warden, and good soldiers who know the countryside."

Cailan looks up, sharp. "You don't mean—?"

"I would prefer it if you took Alistair, yes."

"He must hate me," Cailan says, humourless. "And you don't really mean prefer, you mean I'm _going_ to. Does he even—does he even know? Or was he like me, and only found a month ago?"

"Yes, I do mean you're going to," Duncan says, "and as far as I know, he has always been aware of who he is and what his connection to you is. You would have to ask either him or Arl Eamon if you wanted to know for certain."

"Oh, yes, I'll do that," Cailan says, bites every word off. "Right as soon as I manage to repair two decades of damage to my relationship with my younger brother. I—shit. Sorry. I need to get my head together. First light."

"First light," Duncan confirms, "and do not worry about Alistair. He does not harbour ill will towards you, Cailan. Merely a curiosity."

Cailan grins. It doesn't reach his eyes. "Curiosity killed the cat, Warden-Commander. I'll go pack."

Duncan watches him go. If he didn't think it would offend, he would point out how much like Maric the young King truly is. He sighs. Fiona's introduction into that bloodline has to be the best thing that ever happened to it.

(There are days he sees how much of her is really in Alistair, regrets taking the boy into the Wardens and effectively ending any chance of that blood passing on to a new generation. And then he thinks of how Fiona overcame the taint, how Maric survived two trips into the Deep Roads, and that if _anyone_ can overcome the taint, it will be Alistair. Time will tell.)

He'll need to go tell the lad. There will be an argument, of course. Alistair wants to be here with the other Wardens, regardless of knowing how slim their chance of success is. If anything, knowing how much the boy is like his parents makes this easy.

Because Alistair is just enough like his parents that if the rest of the party is decided on, he will fall in line with little argument.

So, soldiers who know their way across the countryside? Duncan can think of many of them. The Ash Warriors will never go, and…

...and there is only one choice.

Someday, he will track down Warden-Commander Larius in the afterlife and give the man what for.

He turns, footsteps light. It's an old habit, one he never bothered to break. But it's going to be best, as he slips between the two tents in the royal enclave, if he does not wake Loghain, does not disturb the young King. There's been enough misery tonight.

Which is why he can't quite stop the smile when he sees the young soldier he's looking for sparring with one of his recruits, both laughing. It's more play than sparring, and it sends a painful knife through his heart to think of breaking it up.

The dwarven girl has not smiled at all since leaving the Deep Roads, her countenance bitter and dark. King Cailan knows nothing of rage, he thinks, because this fallen princess has a kind of fury that could destroy all of Orzammar if she so chooses. Someday, that anger will come to a head, and by all the gods Duncan hopes he's there to see it.

But for now, she is smiling, laughing, _happy_ after a fashion, just like a young woman should be.

"Sereda," he says, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I need to borrow your friend here."

Her face closes off like a candle being blown out. Her spine goes straight, her shoulders go back, and for a moment, it's like she's not lost everything she's ever known. "Of course, Warden-Commander. Hey, Hawke—" she breaks off, and for the barest hint of a second, the ghost of a smile graces her lips, "—thanks. Let's do it again, sometime, yes?"

"You'll only lose, I don't see why you want to face the humiliation a second time," the other woman calls after her, but Sereda's already walking away, long blonde hair swaying in her wake.

Marian Hawke runs a hand through sweat-damp hair, grinning horribly to herself, before she turns and looks at Duncan. "Hello, Warden-Commander, who've I offended this time?"

"No one," he says, bitterly thinks of all the lost potential. This woman would have made an _amazing_ Warden, and with her and the other two he's recruited? Oh yes, someday, he will find Larius's spirit and there will be _words_. "I actually have a job for you. Your brother too, if you're interested."

"Oh, so instead of getting yelled at, I might get paid?" Hawke says cheerfully. "Excellent. And here I was, expecting darkspawn."

"Do this well and you could get a title," he mutters. Ferelden does have so few nobles, these days, and even fewer on good terms with the Wardens. Then, louder, "There is an emergency in the north. His Majesty will be leaving at first light. He requires skilled soldiers with knowledge of how to traverse the countryside safely. I was hoping you and your brother would be willing."

"The king?" Hawke arches an eyebrow at him. "...Are you _sure_ I'm not in trouble? It sounds like I'm in trouble, you're making the same face my mother makes when I've managed to burn water again."

"You are not in trouble, but this will not be an easy assignment," Duncan sighs heavily, thinks of Cailan's reaction to seeing Alistair, of Alistair's reaction to seeing Cailan. "I would prefer you take it because of your brother, and your family's history. You've been up and down the road between here and Highever more times than anyone else in this camp. You know the path."

"Have you _met_ Carver?" Hawke asks dryly.

"Have you met the youngest of the Wardens with me? Alistair?"

"The one with the nose?" she squints, thinking about it. "It's a very weird nose."

 _It's his mother's nose_ , he doesn't say, _and he has her temper too_.

What he _does_ say, is, "The one who looks like His Majesty, yes. The rumours are true and with the two of them both going to Highever, I would like a functioning set of siblings to accompany them. If only to help keep them from potentially killing each other."

Hawke pops her hip out, taps her foot as she thinks about it. Clearly the man has no idea how much of a pain Carver is—calling their relationship _functional_ is, at best, a stretch—but that's not the real point of contention. "You know we'll need a mage," she says, voice light. "Can't have someone dying on us, blood and guts are _so_ passé."

"Oh good," he says, "you spared me from having to avoid admitting that I knew there was a third sibling. If she has any healing skills at all, please pick her up as soon as possible. Lothering, correct?"

"Will the king object?" she asks. Bethany is sunlight and sweetness and if this puts her in the Templars' sight, Hawke will kill everyone and everything in her path. No one can witness something if there are no witnesses left alive! And Hawke swore a long time ago that her sister would never go to the Circle, not as long as she breathes.

"If he does, you are free to slap him," Duncan smiles grimly. "He could probably use it, though I suspect Alistair may do it before you could," he stops, briefly, to think of what putting Alistair and an apostate in the same party might result in. "You should be aware that prior to joining the Wardens, Alistair was trained as a Templar. For the most part, he doesn't care, but the training does show itself from time to time."

"Will _he_ have a problem with my sister?"

"No," he says, firm. No, Alistair will not have a problem. He will see to that himself. "Will you take the job?"

"Sure," Hawke says, lips splitting into a smirk. She flops her shoulder up and down. "An adventure, what fun! Now, to find my little brother and dunk his head in a pond until he agrees to come with us."

"I see why Sereda likes you," he says, a laugh echoing in the words. "Be at my fire before first light."

"I hope you know I think your fire is pointlessly large," she says. She waggles her fingers at him, gravel crunching beneath the heel of her boot as she turns. "First light, Warden-Commander. If you'll excuse me."

Three down, one to go.

Duncan sighs and sets off for where he knows Alistair will be. Not sleeping, of course. He's not sure Alistair has been able to sleep properly since the mages arrived, and so far there has been no conversation about it. He should probably do something about that.

Just… there's never a good time to do it?

It's slow going, making his way towards one of the few towers still standing below the Tower of Ishal. It's not much of anything, just a dais overlooking the gorge. There is an unsettling light not too far out, a raging fire spreading over the Wilds. It would be so much better if it were that, and not thousands of torches, campfires, each one burning bright amid an ever-growing horde of darkness.

King Cailan can't leave soon enough, as far as Duncan is concerned. The battle plan as it stands is an absolute death trap, and one he suspects the young King of having constructed with the sole purpose of self-destruction in mind. There's not really a polite way of saying that it's a terrible plan, and that only the worst king would willingly lead his own men to their deaths.

"Are you here to drag me off to sleep?"

Duncan blinks, looks down at the young man currently staring up at him. "No, though it would be a good idea. You've got a long journey ahead of you."

"I've just—wait, what?" Alistair frowns and for a moment, he looks so much like Fiona that Duncan just wants to laugh at the absurdity of seeing an angry elf's pinched expression on a face so like Maric's.

"There is to be a civil war," Duncan says, kneels down beside the younger man. "King Cailan will be leaving for Highever at first light to try to defuse the situation. He's going to need a Warden to accompany him."

"And you're sending me," there is a sharp edge to his voice, and Duncan thinks he may have underestimated how much bitterness existed with this brother. "Can't someone else go?"

"No," Duncan says, doesn't know how to explain all the things he should be saying. Fiona is still alive, she loves this boy more than anything. That a brother is not a thing to be wasted, that the abandonment of his own brother is one of his greatest regrets because now that his Calling is upon him, there will be no chance to ever apologize.

"I know this will not be easy," Duncan murmurs. "Right now, the acting Teryn in Highever is hurting. I do think that if you and Cailan can work together, you will stand a higher chance at getting through to Lady Elissa than Cailan alone would."

Alistair sighs, flops back against the white stone. "Is it really that bad?"

He's been doing so good. Hasn't gotten stuck in a conversation with the King even _once_ , though there was that awkward moment by the infirmary when His Majesty had his mouth open like he was about to say something and thought better of it. Alistair isn't sure. He struck up a conversation with a cute priest and walked off before he could find out.

It's really just better if no attachment forms. Attachments are awful things, messy and covered in horse shit and all of six years old.

Long story, ignore that. The short version of it is that life is better for everyone if he and the King _don't_ spend time together. It's just easier for everyone involved. And everyone not involved. That's the thing about royal families. Their issues tend to affect more than just them.

"Unfortunately," Duncan says. "There is a brother and sister pair within the army who will be accompanying you, and you will be picking up their sister in Lothering. It will be a five-man party in total, sadly warrior heavy. You will have one rogue and one mage."

Alistair closes his eyes. If the brother and sister are in the army, then that means the sister they're picking up… "You're sending us with an apostate?"

"You will need a mage, and there is no one these soldiers trust more."

"But an _apostate_?"

Duncan looks at him sternly, Fiona's name on the tip of his tongue. "Alistair, stop being a child. You know as well as I do that just because a mage is not under Templar control does not mean they are inherently evil."

"I know," he says, pinches the bridge of his nose. "I do. It's just—do you think that's wise? We're going to have to pass by the Circle Tower to get to Highever. That region is always crawling with Templars."

"Then you will have to do what you can to protect her," Duncan says flatly. "You are a Warden now. We do not care where a mage comes from, or what they can do. If they are useful, then they are to be respected and protected, just like any other comrade we may encounter."

"I know that," he says. Maker's breath, if he'd known it would be this hard to get away from that instinct… the Templars should come with a warning about that. Join up and get stuck with really terrible habits regarding perfectly pleasant people. It's guaranteed to ruin ninety percent of all social interactions!

(The other ten percent is ruined by your own awkwardness.)

"I don't have a choice, do I?"

"No."

"Great," Alistair says, pushes himself up to his feet. "I should get some sleep then. First light?"

Duncan nods. "If you want, you can sleep next to the fire tonight."

"And be that close to the brother I'm about to have to deal with non-stop?" there's a crick in his neck that won't go away, probably will be there until the moment he finally says goodbye to the King. Then he sees Duncan's stern expression, and he deflates. "Thanks, yeah, that wouldn't be a bad idea."

Alistair wanders off. After a moment, Duncan follows.

The burning fury in the valley below does not leave him, and it is still there when he closes his eyes.

—

First light comes too soon, and Hawke surveys her charges like the battle-seasoned general she deserves to be.

They're a motley crew: Carver, yawning around his breakfast and looking intensely like he'd rather still be in his bedroll, his hair sticking up at the back; the Grey Warden Alistair, who is _also_ yawning around his breakfast and looking intensely like he'd _also_ rather still be in his bedroll; and His Majesty, King Cailan himself, who looks entirely like he hasn't slept at all.

Obviously, Hawke is going to be the only one with any sense, here.

(And possibly the comic relief. It'll depend on the day, most probably, and how homicidal she's feeling towards Carver.)

She looks up, gauging—the sunrise bleeds red, streaking across the sky in vicious enflamed tendrils; there are no clouds, just an endless wash of crimson-red reaching down into the valley. The horizon is an infected wound, and she grimaces.

 _Sailor's warning_ , Hawke thinks, _the weather's going to turn_.

"Right," she says, "if we're going, we need to go now. Let's not let our little civil disagreement get any bigger than it is, hm?"

"There are horses and supplies waiting at the gate," Duncan makes only very little noise walking over the dew-stained grass. Last night this had seemed like the perfect group, but looking at them now he's not so sure. They could use more people actually capable of functioning this early. "Is there anything else you will need?"

Hawke stretches, enjoying the _pop-stretch_ of her spine. "No, I think we're alright. If our sleepy princesses are ready, anyway. Come on, up you get, ladies, no time like the present!"

Carver yawns, flicks a bit of food her way. "Sis, please shut the hell up."

Hawke narrows her eyes at him, and then she's got an arm around his neck and her fist scrubbing at the top of his head in the most undignified noogie in the history of the world. He's almost too tall for this, but he's still too afraid of her to stop her from doing precisely what she pleases. "Want to try that again, _little brother_?"

This is not happening. Maker, _please_. Carver reaches back, tries to stop her, but there's no use. She's already gone, sauntering back to stand by the Warden-Commander like she didn't just make a complete fool of them in front of the _King of Ferelden._ His sister is evil incarnate, there is no other explanation. Her complete lack of regard for how difficult their lives could be if the King decides he doesn't like them…

And the weird Warden who looks like the King. Carver isn't sure he wants to know what that story is. It seems painful and awkward. Though, it looks like the guy could be a buffer between them. If anything, he thinks the King might already dislike this kid.

Poor bastard.

Oh well, not his problem.

"I'm ready," he says, stands and doesn't bother with the dew clinging to his body. "We should get going if we want to leave without notice."

Cailan pulls the hood of his travelling cloak up. Best not to make a scene, but the easy camaraderie between the two siblings clenches deep in his gut, sends a thread of intense longing and black rage up his spine. He chances a glance at Alistair, but his younger brother's face is shadowed in the pre-dawn light, and he can't parse the expression there apart.

Maker, it's going to be a long trip.

"Look at us, a bunch of arseholes standing in a circle," Hawke mutters under her breath, just to break the tension, and when the Warden-Commander makes a choking sound, her lips curve up. The King looks might be about to throw himself into the fire, and the Grey Warden boy doesn't look much better.

This is nonsense.

"What do we call you, then?" she asks, casually, loudly enough for the others to pick up on it. "I think going about bowing and tugging at our forelocks might be a bit much. People might suspect we're _up_ to something."

Cailan blinks at her. She's very pretty, blue-eyed and shorn-haired. But Cailan's spent much of his life around beautiful women, and besides, beauty isn't always indicative of personality. And there's something about her mouth that makes him think she might bite his head off if he tries to turn on the charm— _an ignoble death if there ever was one_ , he reflects.

So instead of grinning the way he might, normally, he shrugs. "Just my name works. Cailan's less of a mouthful than 'Your Majesty'."

"Maybe a different name in towns," Carver says, a little edge of nervousness to his voice. "Cailan isn't exactly a common name."

"That's probably a good idea," Cailan nods. "I might forget about it, though—if you want my attention, just hit me."

 _That shouldn't be too hard_ , Alistair thinks. There's a coiling in his muscles, really painful, actually. He would prefer anything else right now, because the desire to run his fist into the King's face is surprisingly strong. Huh. This is going to be a perfectly awkward journey.

It's going to be a miracle if they accomplish _anything_.

"Duncan, anything else we need to know?" he asks. "Any reports of monster kittens or evil trees?"

Duncan frowns, thinks this might be a bad idea. Oh well, too late to do anything about it now. "Alistair, try to be serious. This will not be a safe journey, and you will need to stay focused for any darkspawn that have moved ahead of the horde."

"I know," he says, quieter. "Let's get going."

"Warden-Commander," Cailan says, "there's one more thing."

"Yes?" Duncan watches the others wander away, leaving him alone with the young King in the bloody dawn. He tries very hard to not think of the things Cailan could say: Loghain is a traitor, there's a failure in the supply line, etc…

"Fergus Cousland is out in the Wilds, scouting. Someone needs to find him and tell him about—about what's happened," Cailan says, and swallows hard. The other man had been sent out just yesterday morning; his unit can't have gone far. "I—can you find him, for me? Please?"

"This would have been good to know sooner, but what's done is done," Duncan sighs, resists the urge to cover his face with his hands. That Dalish girl has been a little stir-crazy since arriving; perhaps sending her into the Wilds will work. Two birds, one stone. "There's a tracker among the Warden-Recruits. She should be able to lead a team after him."

"Thank you," Cailan murmurs. "Once she finds them…"

"I'll send him to Highever as quickly as possible," Duncan says.

Cailan gives him the most grateful look he can manage without actually thanking him a second time; if Duncan can get Fergus Cousland back to Highever, it will go a long way towards closing this newest injury to Ferelden's person.

"Please don't die," the King says, at last.

"Only if you don't, Your Majesty."

Cailan cracks a smile. "Too much to hope, and fine, I'm going, I'm going!"

He turns and heads to the edge of camp where Alistair and the brother-sister-pair wait. Maker, he doesn't know either of their names, he's going to have to remedy that immediately. He casts a glance over his shoulder back at Duncan, just once, but the man's already turned back to his fire to stare into the inscrutable depths.

Cailan's not as surprised as he would like to pretend.

He takes a slow breath, and goes.

—

Lothering is a perfectly _miserable_ place.

Carver kicks a rock out of the way and looks out over the brown valley, the small village built in the shadows of a crumbling Imperial Highway. It's a miserable place for a miserable crew; Maker, this journey has been painful from the get-go. All tension and silence and someone please remind him why he agreed to this.

"Maria, are you sure this is a good idea?" he murmurs, moving closer to her so that only she can hear him. "You know we can't leave Mother alone here, not with the darkspawn so close."

"Home, sweet home," Hawke says, grinning awfully at him, but dropping her voice when she speaks again. "And don't you _Maria_ me, you think it'll get you anywhere but it won't. We'll deal with Mother as soon as we get home—maybe we can send her to Kirkwall. Calm down, Carver, it'll be alright."

The King and the Warden both turn to blink at her, and Hawke's struck by how much they really _do_ look alike. Huh. If she were a better person, she might give them a rest.

But she's not a better person, so that's a little moot.

"Welcome to Lothering, ladies," she says, fluttering her eyelashes at them. "Home of dirt, more dirt, and _even more_ dirt! Aren't you _excited_?"

"It's dreadful," Carver says, scowling at his sister, "you're welcome to say so. The local lord doesn't give a shit what happens to it and it absolutely reflects this."

Alistair looks out over the small settlement, and thinks Carver might be on to something. Lothering is a small sprawl of a place, brown with the odd patch of green. Even the _crops_ are brown and miserable. And livestock? None, as far as he can see. There's no way people can actually thrive here.

He casts a sideways look at the King, and wonders if he had any idea what the real state of his kingdom is.

"Where will we find your sister?" he asks. Even from here, he can see the Chantry and the shiny-bright of the Templars. Such nice armour. Shame it's so utterly useless.

Hawke goes very still for a moment, measuring. Carver has a point, though she's loathe to admit it; Beth must be kept safe at all costs, and if this Warden-boy is going to have an issue with her sister, Hawke would much rather kill him now and put them all out of their miseries.

She has a feeling the King may take issue with her cavalier attitude towards the murder of his probably-sibling, however, so that puts an end to that. What a pity.

"In the Chantry, probably," she says. "You think?"

"Probably," Carver says, squints up at the sky. "It's nice out, and Dog usually needs a walk by now."

Alistair almost falls over. "In the _Chantry_?"

An apostate, willingly in a Chantry _surrounded_ by Templars. Is this girl suicidal? Would she rather have a mage's robe and big, bright sign that says 'I AM A MAGE'? Because yes, walking into the lair of the people hunting you is absolutely the behaviour of well-adjusted, rational people. He's fairly certain his heart is going to give out from stress before they ever reach Highever.

Carver shrugs. "There's a young sister who has some pretty great stories."

"And Beth's hard to resist," Hawke says. She folds her arms over her chest, gaze gone strange and sharp. "She doesn't ask for very much. Just you wait, you'll be just as arse-over-tits about her as the rest of us."

"At least we know she's brave," he says weakly.

Carver sighs, reaches out to knock the Warden on the shoulder. "Stop thinking about it. Beth's just too well-loved for anyone to sell her out. Bravery's got nothing to do with it."

"There still seem to be a high number of people who actually believe the Chantry's teachings on mages," Alistair says. "That isn't a concern for her?"

Hawke snorts. "Of course it's a concern, but it's _our_ concern. Always has been. As long as you're wonderful-kind, and keep your nose where it belongs, Beth stays safe, and we have no problems! Everything will be just _lovely_ , won't it."

"I've got nothing," Alistair says, hands held up in surrender. "I was never a full Templar, and there's a very good reason for that. She won't be in any danger from me, I promise."

"Were you really that bad at it?" Carver asks. Admittedly, the Warden is a bit… _soft_ , compared to most other Templars, but he was beginning to think the Order would take anyone; it seems a bit like a join or die kind of thing. "How are the Wardens any better?"

"The Wardens don't make you chain up perfectly lovely people and treat them like monsters. It really does nothing for a man's social skills," Alistair explains, looks everywhere but at the quiet man standing close to him. There's something about the King that makes his hair stand on end, all of it alive like lightning is arcing through it.

It's unpleasant.

Slowly, he steps towards the siblings, inching away like he's trying to escape a wild animal. "And more sensible armour. That platemail the Templars wear is the _worst_."

"You never expect to find sense out of someone who fights darkspawn for a living," says Hawke, smirking her approval at him. Very well, the boy's got a sense of humour, she can get behind that. The King is another story entirely; he's still and silent as a grave, and Hawke knows she's going to have to prod at him later, but she'll need Beth's help for _that_ , at the very least. Beth has a way of putting people at ease; Hawke's never gotten the hang of it. "Let's go, rebellions don't wait for the druffalo to come home, and neither do we."

"Can we at least do this without drawing attention, Mar?" Carver slips around to her other side. "I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have to spend an hour listening to Old Barlin tell us everything we've missed."

"Wolves and spiders and bears, oh my!" Hawke elbows her brother gently in the ribs. When no one speaks up—not even the King, Andraste, _someone_ needs to talk some sense into that man—she sighs theatrically, and leads the way to the Chantry.

Lothering is the same as always, but the eyes of the populace are a little more hunted than she'd been expecting. The refugee tents are still set up; they'd been here before she and Carver left for Ostagar, but there's more of them, now. They're all gaunt-cheeked, thin-boned, and she looks at her little brother, says out of the corner of her mouth, "We _have_ to get Mother out of here."

"Think Highever will take her too?" he mutters, though he knows they can't take Mother along with them. The road they're taking to Highever is far too dangerous, even if his sister is right. "She should be able to get a ship to Kirkwall from there. We can tell her to head up the eastern side of the lake?"

"And give her the opportunity to hover anxiously between Beth and the King?" she asks, wry. "Though, you know, the King looks like he could do with some motherly hovering…"

Carver doesn't even deign to reply to that, just stares at her, expression horrified. Hawke laughs, and nearly reaches out to noogie him for the second time in as many days. "Oh alright, fine, you're probably right, Mother is a little much."

"More the bandits, beasts, and other things we'll be meeting on the western side will be too much for her," he says through gritted teeth. "I think Bethany will have to take care of the motherly hovering on her own. At least she can set things on fire with her mind."

"Yeah," Hawke says, fondly, "I love it when she does that."

She resolutely ignores the choking sound that comes from behind her. Silly Warden boy, he's going to be fine, Beth will only set _him_ alight if he allows Hawke anywhere near the cooking supplies. But she leads their merry little band to the town center, spares only a single forlorn look towards the tavern, and then, brown-red dirt crumbling under her heel, turns the corner into the Chantry courtyard. There are sacks piled up in the corner, the thick wooden doors propped open to let in the fresh air. Sweet-smelling dried grasses line the Chantry's entrance.

And there's Beth with Dog sitting peaceably at her heels, clutching a book to her chest, and smiling at one of the Templars as brightly as the sun itself.

(Something very tight eases in Hawke's chest, and she releases a breath she didn't know she was holding. There's her sister, safe and sound. She's still safe. She's still _safe_. But Maker, _why_ is she wearing her flirting face? Bethany, _no_.)

Carver breathes out tension he didn't know was in his body. Beth is still Beth, still happy and safe and sunshine. There is a moment, though, a rush of protective anger that makes him think cracking a Templar's skull open on the Chantry floor would be—a very bad idea.

Don't kill the Templars. At least not where there are witnesses.

He also doesn't want to run up and greet Bethany. Or, well, actually he does. It was just that the last time he did that with a Templar he didn't recognize nearby, his relationship with Beth was… _misidentified_. He'd rather not repeat that. Sister Leliana still hasn't stopped laughing.

"Mar, you want to handle this?" he asks, uneasy. Templars are a nasty sort, and he's fairly certain that if he intervenes here, it will not end well. "Subtlety and Templars don't go well for me."

"You just don't want to have to listen to the teasing," Hawke says, snickering. "It's not my fault you look more like Mother than Beth does."

Carver makes a noise of outrage, but Hawke's off, ambling towards the Chantry doors and her sister and her sister's _Templar_ before he can get a word in edgewise. She pops her hip out, and sighs loudly. "Darling, _again_? Really?"

Beth looks away from the flushing Templar, mouth falling open a little. "Mar? Is that—you're home!" And she leaves the poor boy mid-sentence, and throws herself at her sister. "Where's Carver, I thought—Ostagar, you'd be gone—!"

"Uh, Beth…?" the Templar boy says, looking a little stricken.

"Sorry," Hawke tells him, cheerful, "I've come to take my sister home. You don't mind, do you?"

"Is it always like this?" Alistair asks quietly, looking up—why does he have to look _up_ , this is ridiculous. He'd thought it absurd that the King was so tall, but now there are two of them?—at Carver.

"Unfortunately," Carver sighs, runs a hand through his hair. "At least Marian isn't mistaken for Beth's husband."

Alistair grimaces. Yes, that would be awkward. This is why he's always been somewhat happy to not have to deal with siblings—uh, no, that's a bad line of thought. Stop thinking about that. Think about goldfinches, goldfish, gold hair, gold… well, _shit_.

"She can fight?" he settles on. Battle plans are good. Battle plans are not family-related in any way.

Carver shrugs and simply says, "She's a Hawke."

"That's not very specific."

"Yes, it is," Carver grins, not at Alistair but at the slip of a mage following after Marian. "Bethany, did you lose Dog again?"

"He was just here, Mar, whistle for him—are you going to hug me or not, Carver?" Beth demands, but her smile nearly splits her face it's so wide. She's reaching for him already, doesn't even register that there are other people around. She's already said hello to Mari, and now there's only her twin left.

Bethany doesn't weigh much. Carver figured that out _years_ ago, didn't realize until later that it wasn't that she's weightless so much as it is that he's just so used to picking her up and twirling her around in lieu of a hug that he doesn't notice. This is his twin. That's logical isn't it? That she registers more as a part of him, rather than something separate?

And she does. She's still warm and alive and safe and still so light in his arms as he twirls her around. "Please don't be mad about what we've got to tell you," he whispers in her ear.

"It's you, what do I care," she murmurs in reply, clinging as tightly as she can, eyes squeezed shut. He smells like dirt and sweat and _home_ , home in a way that not even home smells like. "I'm never letting you out of my sight again, what if you'd _died_?"

"You'd just drag me back to kill me yourself," he smiles, relaxing fully as the smell of lilacs and sunlit fresh air invades his senses, so familiar after years and years spent in the same house with it. He lets her go, backs away enough that she should be able to see the other two with them. The Chantry is no place for these introductions. "Mar, should we go somewhere quieter?"

"And you didn't want to make a scene," Hawke sighs at the pair of them and the way they've tucked themselves into each other like puzzle pieces. "It's no wonder people think you're married, you're more codependent than Dog is—" but neither of her younger siblings pay her any mind, and so she whistles sharply through her teeth. Her mabari comes bounding out from whatever little warren he's been investigating, chicken feathers on his muzzle. Oh, if he's been into Allison's chickens again, she's going to kill him, he knows he can't _do_ things like that—

"Let's go home," she says, something settling at the sight of her family back together, the way they belong. "We've got plenty to talk about."

Alistair follows behind them, careful to keep some distance between the hooded King and himself. The twins—they are twins, right? He seems to remember there being a mention of twins—walk close together, hands brushing together occasionally. Hawke was onto something about easy-to-misconstrue. And Hawke herself is close by, on the mage's other side with that great beast of a Mabari beside her. There's an easiness between the four of them, a sense of belonging that just doesn't…

He shrugs, uncomfortable in his armour, and inches away from the King just a little more.

Home for the Hawke family is a little cottage tucked into the shadows near the forest, a bit of a hike outside of town. It's well hidden, quaint, surrounded by well-tended gardens. There's nothing at all to suggest a mage lives here, and he gets the sense that this house was built with the intention that it be easy to abandon if necessary. That's an awful way to live, he thinks, not being able to put down roots and call a place _home_ because one member of the family happens to be just a little different. No one should have to live like that.

Especially not a family like the Hawkes. It dawns on him slowly, that they have built their entire existence around protecting this little slip of a mage, skipping along between her siblings. That's dedication. That's _love_ , powerful and all-consuming, the kind of thing he was beginning to think didn't really exist at all.

"So," he says, tries not to be as painfully awkward as he feels, "what's our plan? We do have a plan, don't we?"

"Get to Highever as fast as we can," Hawke says easily. "An adventure up the Imperial Highway! Ten silver says we get attacked by bandits no less than three times, and at _least_ once by a bear."

"No bears," Beth says, frowning. She can't help but wonder what's going on—Mar's not said who their _guests_ are, and neither has Carver, and _that_ is strange enough on its own to be of interest—but there will be _no bears_. She hates bears.

"Yes, but _how_ are we going to get to Highever? What are we going to do when we get there?" Alistair asks, desperately does not look at the King. "Are we just going to walk up to the front gates and demand to see the acting Teryn? How do we know they're not just going to kill us on sight?"

"I was thinking we'd knock," says Hawke, "it's much more polite."

"I don't think polite and civil war go together," he says. "We'd probably have better luck negotiating with the bear."

"I can do it," Cailan says. His voice sounds strange, hoarse; he's barely spoken at all since they left Ostagar, and he thinks it may be best that he continues the habit. He's got a vague idea why they're in Lothering, and it has to with that very small girl hiding in the Hawke boy's shadow.

"Oh, what do you know, he _can_ speak," Alistair says dryly. "So we've just got to figure out how to travel a dangerous road in under a week to get to Highever, dodging bandits, bears, darkspawn, and whatever else the Maker decides to throw at us. All this, while not getting him killed and hope that we don't all end up dead when we actually reach Highever. That's doable. Perfect. Zero chance of success. That's absolutely my idea of a good time."

"We can cross the Calenhad," Beth says, softly. "If we go to Redcliffe, we can take the ferry. It's faster than riding."

"Yes, but," and Alistair finds his voice getting stuck in his throat at the sight of her wide brown eyes, " _you_."

"Me," she says, and smiles.

"There will be more Templars if we go that way," he says. "They keep a close watch on the ferry after a mage decided swimming was a good escape plan. It's too risky to take you across the lake that way."

"I think I can decide what's too risky for myself, thank you _very_ much," Beth says, and her voice has gone cool. She stares at him steadily, but there's laughter in her eyes. "And what do you know about the Templars? I doubt you've been running from them your whole life."

"Worse," he says, thinks of the Grand Cleric's imperious stare and shivers at the memory. "I was one."

"Well, that's something, isn't it," she murmurs, and turns her face away to stare into the crook of Carver's elbow. _Stupid_ , she tells herself, _you should know better! Mar's always telling you not to flirt for a reason, one of these days it's going to get you killed_! "But it doesn't mean I'm wrong. It'd be faster, less dangerous, _and_ I've spent all of my waking life avoiding getting caught. I think we have a half-decent chance of it."

"You're seriously going to agree to this?" he says, looking between the two Hawkes he hopes _aren't_ completely insane.

"She's not wrong, is the problem," Hawke glares at her younger sister, but it's a soft thing, full of exasperated fondness. "Carver and I have fought our way out of worse."

Alistair nods, motions towards the King. "And what about the _other_ security issue? It's going to be a lot harder to hide him on a ferry. Lots of people in a small space tend to talk."

"Can we talk about this _inside_?" Cailan croaks. "I think we could all do with some introductions."

Carver sighs. This is going to be a _long_ journey. He turns towards the house, motioning for the others to follow. "This way," he says. "Beth, can you keep Mother from doing her hovering thing?"

"Nope," she pops the _p_. "I'm not going to deny her the chance to fuss. Maker knows she deserves to fuss over someone who isn't me for once in my life."

"No, Beth, she needs to not hover this time," Carver stops, looks back at the hooded man, then back at his sister. "Please?"

Beth tilts her head, stares at him a little skeptically. But he _never_ says please, not unless he means it. Not unless it's _important_. She looks at their hooded companion again, a little closer this time, eyes passing over wide shoulders and the barest flash of blonde hair.

"I'll see what I can do," she promises. He's going to _owe_ her for this, the next time he comes home, _he_ gets to do the shopping with Mother. Their other companion is still watching her; he's odd, can't be much older than she is, and he doesn't look like he's seen much happiness.

Templar or not, the world can always do with a little more happiness in it.

And so she flashes him a little smile, an apology in the gesture. She can't really say _sorry you were trained to hunt girls like me; I'm glad you don't, anymore_ without making it awkward.

Carver ducks his head as he enters the house. It's too short, he's been saying that for ages, but all anyone has to say is that they never expected him to be this tall. Usually with some joke about how his breeches are too short again.

"Welcome to our home," he says, watches with a bit of satisfaction that the King has to stoop even more than he does to get through the door.

Cailan pulls his hood off for the first time in two days, and grins a little weakly. "Thank you for having us," he says, quietly, shucks the travelling cloak off. After this is over, he's never going to wear a travelling clock _again_ , they're hot and uncomfortable and _awful_. He's about to say something else, but the smallest Hawke is looking between him and Alistair, brow furrowed.

"Are you two brothers?" she asks.

If there were a list of _how to make things awkward in less than ten seconds_ , this would be at the top. Alistair glances over at the King, and isn't sure how to answer. The obvious answer is yes, he knows that; thank you, there is a _reason_ he keeps his hair short and it has nothing to do with the practicality of it.

"Something like that," Cailan says, very quiet. "And who are you?"

"Bethany Hawke," she says, raises her chin. There's something here that she doesn't really understand, and Carver looks like he's about to hit his head against a wall, and Mar's covered her face with a hand, shoulders shaking. Her siblings are _no help_ , honestly. "Mage, healer, setter of things on fire with my mind. Pleased to meet you, Ser…?"

Cailan raises his eyebrows at her. Well, _that_ was blunt.

"Alistair," the Warden says, sharp as an uneasiness sweeps over him at the _something like that_. Maybe it's just the _no_ that was on the tip of his tongue. Maker, if they could just go back to the King being _silent_. It was so much easier. "Just Alistair. I'm a Warden, not a knight."

"It's not kind to interrupt a conversation," Beth says. There's a tiny little grin dimpling up her cheek. "You're all well and good, but I wasn't talking to you."

He shrugs. "Sorry, I was raised in a stable. Not a good place to learn manners."

"Then you can learn some, now," Beth says, prim. "And you can introduce me to your sort-of brother, since you're clearly so good at them."

"Not my brother," he says, inching away from the man that really does look too much like him. If he'd wanted a mirror, he would have packed one. "He's the King."

Beth looks across the room to where their other guest stands. He's slumped, and there's something about his face that makes her think of how Carver's face goes when someone's hurt his feelings but he doesn't want them to know that he's hurt. She almost huffs—she doesn't think there's a world where any kind of king looks like a kicked mabari puppy—and very nearly reaches out to smack at Alistair's chest to tell him not to be mean.

That might get her in trouble, though. She looks to Mar and Carver. This needs clarification, and she _clearly_ can't rely on either of their guests for it.

"Beth," Carver says, careful of the words. Maker, walking on eggshells is going to be easier than dealing with these two, "this is His Majesty, King Cailan of Ferelden."

He hopes that's the right way of introducing the King, if only because Mother will box his ears if he's mucked this up and she finds out. It probably isn't. Carver's never had a need to know how nobility works. Doesn't much care to, and why should he know anything about how to introduce a royal? He lives in a mess of a house in a backwater village where dreams go to die. Nobody noble or royal ever did anything for them, so why should he care?

" _Please_ just call me Cailan," the King says, looking defeated. Beth has a strange urge to sit him down at the table and pour soup down his throat. He looks like he could use someone half-decent to mother at him—

"Is _this_ why you wanted me to keep Mother from hovering?" she asks, and when her twin winces, Beth frowns in his general direction, disappointed. " _Carver_. You're lucky she's out, she'd never forgive us!"

"It'd just remind her of Kirkwall," he mumbles, low enough that only Beth should be able to hear. Nobility and Mother is a complicated thing, and adding a broken down young man into the mix… Carver doesn't like that shadowed expression his mother gets sometimes, when the memories are particularly bad, and he knows Mar and Beth like it even less. "Now that this is all settled, can we get going? We might be able to make Redcliffe by morning."

"I'm not leaving without saying goodbye to Mother," Beth says. "You know what she'll think if I just disappear."

"We can find her on the way out," he says, looking at their sister. Talking Mother into leaving Lothering is going to have to be her thing, he thinks. She's always had more sway than either of the twins. He should probably be more upset about that, but right now there's a very miserable king standing in their home with his equally miserable not-brother, all while a civil war brews in the north and a Blight starts in the south.

What a _wonderful_ time to be alive.

"We're going to lose the sun, Carver," Hawke sighs. She's let this go on far too long. King Cailan needs a proper night's sleep, and Beth needs time to pack. And Mother… Mother is going to take some convincing, if they want her to leave. "It'd be safer to stay the night here, and leave tomorrow."

"I agree," Alistair says. "We're close enough to the Wilds that darkspawn are still a risk. Nighttime isn't safe, not with the chance that some of them are ahead of the horde."

Carver frowns, does his best to not think about the arguments he overheard at Ostagar. It's amazing how some people just don't notice the insignificant, even when the insignificant are as big as he is. "First light, then. Any objections?"

"Carver," Hawke says, gently, "sit down."

He sits, because he's still her little brother, and he still knows when he needs to calm down. She looks at Beth. "Supper, then?"

"Only if you sit down, too," Beth replies, voice dry. "I like my food edible."

"Uh—" Alistair stands up a little straighter, tries to find the right words that don't make him seem like a complete idiot, "—I can help? I can cook—I mean, I can help you cook, if you need it."

Well, there goes _that_ plan. So much for not being an idiot. Good job, Alistair, good job. He forms a fist with his left hand, short nails cutting into his palm. Someday, he will learn to keep his mouth shut. Today, however, is not that day.

Beth _beams_ at him. No one _ever_ offers to help with supper, except for Mar, but calling Mar _useless_ in the kitchen is a compliment. And so she beams at him, and beams at him, and beams at him again. "I'd love the help, thank you, Alistair! Here, we'll make soup, do you mind chopping onions?"

If there isn't actual sunshine pouring out of her skin, Alistair will be very surprised. He's never seen anyone quite that sunny, especially when he offers to cook.

(Mostly this is because they then ask howhe knows anything about cooking which leads to explaining that the growing-up-in-a-stables thing is actually true and that he always liked to escape to the kitchens when he could. It was warmer, and the cook was nicer than the head groom. He just learned by hanging around her, but that always seems to make people kind of sad.)

"Onions, yeah," he says, and then there's a knife in his hand and this is something he can do. Knives are familiar, and onions never bothered him much. He can do this.

Beth sets him to chopping onions, and alright, she can feel everyone else staring at her, but what do they expect? If they want to eat, someone's going to have to make it, and that's a fight Beth's not prepared to have, right now. She caught sight of the crimson nail-marks on Alistair's hands, and she knows them because she's worn them herself—cooking, at least, will give him something to do with his hands that isn't accidentally hurting himself. She does, however, turn around to glare at her siblings.

"You _can_ help, you know," Beth tells them, hands on her hips.

Carver holds up his hands in surrender. "You banned me from cooking, same as Mar, remember?"

"I didn't ban you from making a salad, did I? And Mar, you can set the table. We're not _heathens_ , you know, we are civilized people who use cutlery!"

"Right," Carver mumbles. Salad? Since when do they eat salad with their soup? But he sees Beth's glare and there's a promise of yelling there. "Garden, then. I'll just go do that."

"Can I help?" Cailan asks, very softly.

He still rather looks like a kicked puppy, Beth decides, but that doesn't excuse lazing about. "Yes," she says, nodding, "you can, there's a loaf of bread in the pantry, you can cut it up. Thick slicks, please, it's better to dip."

The King blinks at her, like he'd expected her to say _no_. A heartbreakingly small grin curls up his face, and he jumps up from the table, heads right to where she points and occupies a much larger portion of the kitchen than she'd been expecting him to require, but then, she hadn't really given a thought to the size of him, Andraste, he's taller than _Carver_ is.

Her sister shoots her a glance, and there's approval there, in Mar's gaze. Beth turns pink, and goes back to peeling potatoes.

—

"Put this on," Hawke says, and dumps a shining pile of metal on Alistair's head.

The platemail is ungodly heavy and—Alistair knows that shiny emblem on the breastplate. It's too clean, almost _sparkling_ in its clear state of never-seen-battle. It's offensive and really quite ugly. It does nothing for him.

"No, absolutely not," he says, pushing the armour away like it's diseased. It probably is. Damn Templars never take the stupid stuff off. "How did you even get that?"

"Well, when two people love each other very, very much—" Hawke begins, breaks off laughing at the horror on his face. "Oh, come on, I knocked a Templar out and stripped him, what do you think?"

"Are you _mad_?"

"Possibly," Hawke shrugs. "I thought it might come in handy one day, in case I ever needed Carver to help hide Beth."

"So make him wear it," Alistair says. How is this his life. "The Grand Cleric would probably love nothing more than to see me dead. I'd rather not encourage that."

"He got too tall for it," she says, steady. Madness is subjective. Marian Hawke's done worse things than strip a Templar out of his ceremonial vestments to keep her little sister out of the Circle. "And you, at least, would know what you're doing."

Alistair sighs, heavily. He should have known. It's Tuesday, after all. Bad things always happen on Tuesdays. "Since I apparently didn't tell you, you should probably know that I did my training in Redcliffe. If there were anywhere in Ferelden where we would run into someone who knows I am not Templar, it would be there."

"That's what the helmet is for," she tells him, pats him on the head. "And to hide the thing you call your face."

"I'll be useless if we're attacked," he says. "This stuff is impossible to fight in. Do you even have the shield?"

"Of course. Keep Beth safe," Hawke tells him. "I'll look after King Cailan, and my brother can take care of himself. But if it comes down to it, Warden, you get Beth as far away as you can. Understand?"

"Yes, I do," he frowns, tries not to think of the implications of what he's about to say. "Just promise me you won't get the King killed. Unless you haven't noticed, he doesn't have an heir."

"Are you not counting yourself, then?" she asks.

"That's exactly my point?" he shrugs. "I'd rather my heritage not come up any more than it has to, so if we could just keep him alive and avoid the possibility of my needing to leave the Wardens, that'd be great."

"Don't worry," Hawke says, grins at him exactly the way she grins at Carver when he needs someone to settle him down. She reaches out to ruffle Alistair's hair the same, too. "Our King's got a death wish. I won't let him enact it. Alright?"

"Thank you," he says, and means so much more. It's only been in recent years that the continuing lack of a legitimate heir has come to his attention. Unfortunately, it's come with the added _you might have to be king_ that makes his stomach do weird flips and push bile up into the back of his throat. "I'll keep your sister safe, but I don't see why _this_ is necessary."

"Course you don't, you're still a good person under all that angst," she tells him. "Think of it like this, Warden—Kirkwall's Gallows are very easy to reach from Highever. It gives you and Beth a reason to be travelling north, and any other Templars along the way will let you alone. Yes?"

"That—might actually work," he says. He'd always wondered why the Grand Cleric relented, and it never crossed his mind to ask about the other Circles. " _If_ we're lucky, and the Templar Order was told I was transferred, rather than released. They're touchy about their secrets being anywhere but under Chantry control."

"I hope you taught yourself how to lie," Hawke says, eyes glinting. "You're going to get some practise, this week."

"I was raised in a stable," he repeats. Sometimes it doesn't always register what he means when he says that, he knows, but _really_. "There's quite a bit of lying there."

Hawke stares at him, waits for him to really think about what he's just said. But it looks like it's not registered, and oh, oh Maker, come on, that's not _fair_ , you can't just set something like that up and expect her _not_ to make a sex joke! That's too far! Foul play!

"I'm sure there was," she says, a little faint. He's as bad as Beth. He's honestly as bad as Beth. Hawke has no idea how she's going to deal with the both of them, they're going to stumble all over each other and somehow, somehow Hawke just _knows_ that by the end of this trip, she's going to be begging the Maker to let it end.

Hawke thinks _I didn't ask for this, I am a good person who does not deserve this_ , but it makes no difference.

"Put the armour on, Warden," she sighs, pats his shoulder. "The horses are fed, and everyone else is getting ready to go."

"I can't," he tells her, and when she looks at him like she's about to start yelling, he blushes and clarifies, "it's platemail. I can't put it on by myself. It's too heavy."

"Alright," Hawke says. "Strip."

The blush intensifies. "Can't you send in Carver to do this?"

"If you want," Hawke shrugs, doesn't tell him that Carver's _far_ more likely to make fun of his pale pastiness than she is. "You sure?"

"Chantry influence, sorry," he sighs, stands and starts undoing the nice splintmail he's grown so attached to. Maker, someday he will root out all of the Chantry teachings that _aren't_ useful. He's fairly certain he would have been stuck with that crazy dwarf and the creepy Dalish girl if he'd stayed behind at Ostagar, and that would have just led to similar situations eventually. "They're very particular about the modesty thing, it's a bad habit."

'You're precious," Hawke tells him solemn, and then spins to amble out to the main room. "Carver, come get our resident Warden to take his clothes off, he doesn't want my help."

"What the hell?" Carver doesn't even bother to look up from where he's fixing the laces of his boot. His sister and her ideas. "Mari, I love you, but you're batshit insane, you know that?"

"Yes, but I'm also not kidding," she tells him, pats him on the head as she passes by. "Something about platemail? I don't know, it's far too complicated for my small female brain."

"More like you just scared the shit out of him," Carver mutters, but goes off to fix whatever mess she's created this time all the same. If she's dragged out that Templar armour—and she has, hasn't she? Because his sister is bleeding mad all the way to Kirkwall and back again.

Carver steps into the back room and says, "I am so sorry. I should have warned you about her."

"It's nothing," Alistair shrugs. He gave up trying to understand women a long time ago. It seemed too dangerous. "I just can't get the cuirass on by myself."

"I don't think anyone can. Hold still, will you?"

Templar armour is the worst. Really, it is. The only reason Carver knows how it works—Maker, never let Mar find out about this, she will _skin him alive_ —is because there was this cute girl stationed in Lothering a year or so ago. Charming young thing, clearly not cut out for the Order and sent here to get some experience before moving on to a bigger place.

And, well, Carver and cute girls… he can't really be blamed can he? This was a girl, a Templar that not even Beth with all her beauty could charm. He did what any good brother would do. That it happened to be a girl he actually _liked_ , well, that's another story.

She'd had similar problems with the armour, after all, and hellfire on toast if he didn't prefer her out of it. So, he learned.

"There, that should do it," he tells Alistair, getting the last bit of armour in place. "Where'd she put the helmet?"

"I can get that, thank you," Alistair tries not to sound like he's choking. Maker, but he does hate this armour. "Do I even want to—"

"No," Carver says, finds the helmet and drops it over Alistair's head. "No, you don't, and that's not a question you ever asked me. Now go find out whatever harebrained scheme my sister's cooked up this time."

"I already know," Alistair says, voice muffled by the helmet. But he shuffles out, tries not to trip on that stupid skirt. Ten years, and he never mastered how to _walk_ in this stuff. This is going to be a long, long week.

"Carver, have you seen—why are you wearing that?" Beth asks. She's got a bag and a staff slung over her shoulder, and her eyes have gone very wide, knuckles white around the leather straps.

"It's not me," Carver says, pushes his way past a very still Alistair. "The armour's too small for me now."

"Oh," Beth says, voice weird and high.

"Hey, shh, look at me," Carver says, and his hands on her cheeks, tilting her head up to look at him. "It's just Alistair, and no, I have no idea. This is one of Marian's crazy ideas, so you'll have to ask her. Okay? You're not in danger, I promise."

"I know, I know," she says, bites at her lips, and peeks over her brother's shoulder to get another look at Alistair. She can see it, now; Carver's a near half-head taller than Alistair, and she doesn't think her brother's ever been that still in his life. Oh, she's probably hurt his feelings, and after yesterday…

Beth shoos Carver away, and goes to reach up to take Alistair's helmet. She smiles weakly at him when she gets it off. "Sorry," she says, quietly, "I just—I forget. It's home, is all, and we usually don't have Templars here. Or people dressed like Templars. There's a difference. I didn't mean to… I'm sorry, is the point."

"No, it's fine, you should—of course you're not used to this," and this is why Alistair doesn't like talking to people. Words get jumbled and then usually there's Duncan or someone looking at him with disappointment in their faces. "I'm sorry, really, I am. If there was an easier way, I'd do it, but your sister's right. Maker, tell me I'm not going to be saying that a lot."

Beth catches his wrist, curls her fingers around his gloved fingers and squeezes, even though she knows he won't be able to feel it. "No one likes it when Mar's right, it's a frightening experience for everyone involved. And I'm alright—I mean it, Alistair. I know this wasn't your idea. I just… forget, sometimes. That's all."

"I'm sorry," he says again. "I'm probably going to be saying that a lot, but I need you to know that I don't mean anything I say when I'm trying to be," and he motions towards the too-bright armour, " _this_. It's just until we can safely get into Highever, or hopefully once we've passed the Tower. I didn't ask."

"Honestly, if Marian could have someone follow me around in that armour all the time, I think she'd do it," Beth sighs, and ducks her head. The sun's barely risen, and it already feels like it's been the longest day of her life. She doesn't know how to explain that the only reason anyone would be wearing that armour at home would be if someone's come to take her away, and that's…

Well, it's not a possibility Beth likes to think about.

(And there are nights when she's been alone with only the sound of Mother's breathing in the other room, and she's shaken herself to pieces, wondering and wondering if maybe the fact that she's stayed free has ruined her family's life—can't help but wonder if maybe they'd have been better off if she'd long ago gone to the Circle. Mar and Carver would have no memory of her, and Mother wouldn't always be so on edge, and—

It's a bad train of thought.)

He reaches up with one gloved hand and lightly taps her cheek. "Whatever you're thinking about, stop it. It's not right to split up a family the way the Circle does. If you've stayed free all these years, then it's the Maker's will. Don't question it."

Beth bats him away, but she can't shake the smile.

"Come on," she says, still smiling. "Let's go convince my sister that whatever she's come up with this time is a bad idea. And Alistair?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks."

"I didn't do anything?" but she's already gone off after her sister, the helmet safely in his hands. See, this is why he doesn't really do the talking-to-women thing. It has a tendency to leave his insides all squishy and tangled up. Quite uncomfortable, that.

He puts the helmet back on, if only to hide the smile.

Beth heads outside, only to find her sister systematically deconstructing Carver's packing job. The horses are bearing it with far more grace than Beth herself would have; she's glad she thought to slip carrots and a few lumps of sugar into her pack. Any creature willing to put up with Marian Hawke for longer than thirty seconds deserves treats, once in awhile.

"Mari, what are you _doing_?" Beth asks her.

"Making sure Carver brought enough throwing daggers," her sister says. "He forgets that not all of us have a monstrous sword to swing about their heads. It's indecent, really—"

Beth decides to leave her to it.

"I grabbed all the knives I found," Carver sighs, though only the silent-again King is near enough to maybe hear. He's not sure. Doesn't much care either. He's got one sister who will be suffering nightmares until they can get the Warden out of that damnable armour, and another sister who is… well, his other sister is Marian Hawke.

He reaches down to scratch Dog behind the ears. "You're a good boy. Why are you loyal to that crazy lady?"

Alistair finds the shield left by the door—thank goodness, too, he's going to stick out as it is. Not having the shield would just make it worse, especially since the only shield he _does_ have, has a bloody griffon it. Then he notices the horses saddled for five riders and, still acutely aware of what he's wearing, notices the problem this presents. Maker, he's a good man, isn't he? What did he do to deserve this?

"You know I can't ride a horse while wearing this?" he calls over to the flurry of Hawke. At least he thinks that's Hawke. It could be a scavenger come to raid their packs and steal their horses. He can never tell when she's moving around like that.

Hawke looks up. "Do I need to strip you again?"

"It's just that it's too heavy," he motions towards the horses' slender legs. "None of these are actual war horses. They'll break their legs if they try to carry me in full platemail. And, well, there's also the issue of the saddle. Templar armour doesn't lend itself to horseback riding, not really."

"...So I need to strip you again, is what you're telling me," Hawke says.

"Yes?" Alistair is going to burn this armour first furnace he finds, he swears it. He ducks back inside, doesn't need help getting the Templar armour _off_ , and finally returns in the splintmail he knows and loves.

"Can we go now?"

"We still need to _bring_ the mail," Hawke says.

"You can go pack it up yourself, then," Alistair tells her, and marches off for the black and tan grazing closest to the garden.

"You're no fun!" she calls after him, but she's laughing, and for all her carelessness, her hands move quick and sure as she repacks Carver's bag. She tosses it to him, standing, and her knees _pop_ sickly. "Fine, I suppose murder is much easier, anyway."

"Generally, yes," Alistair says.

"My sister is a madwoman," Carver sets a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Don't encourage her. _Please_ don't encourage her."

Alistair shrugs off the hand, his foot firmly in the stirrup. Life has always been easier from horseback. He can finally look down on some people. "I'll try to keep that in mind."

"That's all I ask," Carver says, moves towards his own horse. "This is going to be a long week."

And he doesn't know how right he is. The ride to Redcliffe is _miserable_ ; the weather's gone _awful_ , a storm rolling in from the south, and the wind comes ice cold and soaking wet. Six hours of riding through hilly country later, Hawke whips her hair back, plasters it down with rain to keep it from covering her eyes, and decides that enough is more than enough. Beth is shaking, Carver looks like he's about to pull out that ridiculous sword of his and challenge the sky to an honour duel, and both the King and Alistair huddle in their travelling cloaks.

"We need to make camp!" she shouts. "We're going to catch our death out here!"

"With no shelter?" Carver shouts back. They're following along the Imperial Highway; he can still _almost_ make out the white structure through the silver curtain of rain. Almost. There's the occasional dark patch he thinks are trees, but suitable campsite? Not so much. "I don't see anyplace to make camp!"

Hawke swears aloud, but it's carried away on the wind. "Beth, can you do anything?!"

"If we get off the highway, maybe?" Beth calls back, wincing as an icy blast of air shakes all the way through her, sending her teeth to chattering.

"Anyone got a better idea?!" Hawke shouts.

But nothing comes, and so she grits her teeth, and jerks the reins hard as she can. She hates having to take the horses through this—the poor beasts aren't bred for rough terrain, not really—but they've not got a choice. There's no telling how long this storm is going to go on, and if Beth throws up a rough-stone building in the middle of the plains, _someone_ is going to notice. They need to be as far away from the Imperial Highway as they can.

And then, of course, Beth falls off her horse.

Alistair hears the fall more than he sees it. Rather than potentially run his horse over it—he's actually starting to like the beast—he jumps down from the saddle, boots sinking deep into the mud. His horse is just behind him, and there's the light one the King is on, it has a hunkered down rider who looks like he'd much rather be anywhere else. Alistair will be kind this once, and not say anything about it.

Hawke is easy to pick out, and that greatsword of Carver's is nigh impossible to miss, so that last horse must be—yup, there's Bethany, struggling to her feet.

"Are you okay?" he moves over to her as quickly as possible. There is mud crawling disturbingly high up his leg. "Are you hurt?"

"Fine," she murmurs, very nearly slumping against him. "Not used to riding this long."

"It's not easy to do, but you need to stay on a little longer," he says, even knowing that she can't. Damn. He should have asked how experienced they all were before leaving. "Do you think you'll be able to make it if you're riding with someone else?"

Beth shrugs a little, eyes closing. She's so _tired_ , and everything is so _hazy_. "Maybe?" she breathes. "Dunno…"

Alistair tugs on her hair. "Hey, wake up, I need you to get back into the saddle," he says. "C'mon, I'll help you up."

"Ow," she manages, wipes rainwater out of her eyes. "No, here, it'll have to be now, I don't think I can… get Mar, Alistair, please, get Mar's 'ttention."

"Hawke!" he calls. "Get over here!"

Her name over the rain is the faintest sound, but Hawke pulls up the reigns and cranes her neck backwards. Oh, _shit_ , Beth's fallen off that stupid horse, Hawke _knew_ she should have set her sister to ride with Carver, why did he have to grow up so _big_ —

"Beth," she says, after dismounting and trekking back to where the Warden and her sister are. "Bethy, love, listen, are you alright?"

"Mari," Beth says, and oh, Maker, her lips are going blue, "I can't go any farther, not on my own."

Hawke slants a look at the Warden. He's tucked himself around Beth, trying to keep a little of the rain off her sister's face. And that's, well, that's something, isn't it, but right now Hawke doesn't have time to think about it.

"Any idea where we are?" she asks, very quietly.

"About an hour out from Redcliffe," he says, looking up at the Imperial Highway. There's an arch there, broken at the bottom in a manner very specific to a wyvern bumping into it. Occupation era damage, and he can just barely see it. He remembers Arl Eamon telling that story with a crooked smile, back when things were still good. "Maybe a little more, but not much."

"Then it's your call," Hawke tells him. "He's your brother."

"No, he's not," he mutters, not that it does any good. Then louder, "If we make a shelter right next to the Imperial Highway, it might be hidden enough that no one will notice."

"Then here works?" Beth asks. Her head drops back to his chest.

"It has to," Alistair answers.

"A'right," she murmurs, and struggles to stand. "Someone hold me straight, I can't do both."

Alistair sighs and picks her up, one arm settling behind her knees and the other around her back. She doesn't weigh much at all, which, in better circumstances he would be worried about. She's not much younger than he is, he doesn't think, and she's a mage. She needs more energy than the rest of them do. He looks pointedly at her sister. "Lead on, Hawke."

 _Nope, not touching that_ , Hawke thinks, and leads the Warden boy to what _seems_ to be relatively stable mud. Her foot only sinks in an inch before it hits solid rock, and that's likely as good as they're going to get it.

"Beth, here."

"Alistair, put me down, please?"

He sets her down, pushes her to her sister. "I'll go get the others?"

"No," Hawke says, mouth going tight, "there's no telling where they've got to. You stay here to keep Beth from falling over, and I'll go find them. Once she's magicked something, I can always find her."

Totally not creepy at all. He doesn't particularly care to know _how_ Hawke always finds her sister. Hits a little too close to all the Templar nonsense rattling around in his head. Alistair adjusts his hold on the mage. "Can you do this?"

Beth nods, blinking twice. And then she pulls the staff off her back, slowly, so slowly, lets it thud into the mud.

"Oh," she murmurs, "there you are."

There's a flash of light, green-brown. The earth _trembles_. Stone arcs up around them, shooting sharp out of the ground with a kind of furious joy that breaks the rain above them. It's nothing special, more of a makeshift cave than anything else; three walls and a roof, a tiny little plateau to sit on. But it's big enough for several people, and the stone overhang comes out far enough that if they're lucky, they might manage to keep the horses dry.

Beth stumbles. "Is that—is that enough?"

"Careful," he says, catches her. She's not going to last much longer, he doesn't think, so he glances back to see if the others are visible yet (they aren't) and helps her into the cave. "C'mon, almost there."

He will never be entirely certain if she was unconscious _before_ he helped her down onto the dry rock, of if she blacked out _after_.

Not that it matters much.

He shrugs off his traveling cloak, drapes it over her. It's caked with mud and soaking wet, but still wool, still warm. Hawke can yell at him all she wants, he couldn't exactly stop her sister from fainting. Poor girl shouldn't have been riding alone, not for that long.

And then he sits down and waits.

—

.

.

.

.

.

 _tbc_.


	2. beneath the ghosts of all my guilt

**disclaimer** : disclaimed.  
 **dedication** : to self-indulgent schmoop  
 **notes** : anyway you get two chapters today because wren's a dumb who forgot to post the first part a month and a half ago when alma put it up on AO3

 **chapter title** : beneath the ghosts of all my guilt  
 **summary** : Solving the problem of Ferelden, one civil disagreement at a time. — Elissa/Cailan, Alistair/Bethany.

—

.

.

.

.

.

Hawke thumps the Templar in the side of the head, and he goes down without a sound.

Redcliffe in the morning is lovely. The sun's bright on the hills, Lake Calenhad stretches out in the distance nothing but a serene glitter, and there's mist obscuring the Frostbacks and the Tower alike. The storm's moved on, thank the Maker. It had been a long night, Beth's breathing shallow and laboured as she tried to sleep a long day of riding and a near-mana depletion off. Hawke's glad of it; she'd been worried that her sister would catch a cold.

But she hasn't, and the horses all managed to fit into Beth's magical shelter so most of their equipment's dried enough to be comfortable, and no one's killed each other yet. It could be worse.

And really, the Templar that she's just knocked out is just the icing on the cake.

"Stop looking at me like that, I didn't even kill this one," Hawke says, already stripping the platemail off him. She ignores the horror with which the Warden is staring at her. "We'll leave the horses here, sell them if we can, and make the crossing as soon as we get the chance."

"Take them to the Chantry," Alistair says. "There should be a man off to the left. He's from a mercenary group who will probably pay good coin for them."

Hawke barely has to nod at Carver before her brother takes off, all five horses on a string. She knows she doesn't have to worry about him getting a decent price; her brother haggles like a merchant born. Instead, she surveys her charges: Alistair, staring uncomfortably down at the _second_ set of Templar armour she's thrown at him in just as many days; Beth hovering anxiously at his side, because of course she is, she can't help her own sick fascination with the Templars, can she; and the King himself, three days of stubble on his face and the sleepless constitution of the walking dead.

If they make to Highever without one of them dying, she's honestly going to be _so_ surprised.

"Are you going to help me with this?" Alistair asks, wry grin working its way across his lips.

"Are your Chantry sensibilities going to be offended if I tell you to take off your shirt?" Hawke asks. "Or do I need to find you a tree to hide behind while you get changed?"

He starts pulling off his clothes, rather than let her come up with something _else_ to tease him about. "I just need help with the cuirass. Bloody thing's too complicated."

Beth _squeaks_.

Oh, no, she's turning red, _why_ is this happening, she needs to get it _together_. Her sister and Alistair both turn to stare at her, and Beth has to wave them off. Where is Carver when she needs him, he's always running off _just_ when things turn terrible, she is _never_ going to forgive him for this—

Hawke stops. What on the Maker's green earth is Beth—

Oh.

 _Oh_.

"No, I'm not touching this," she says. She never signed up to coach her innocent virginal _baby sister_ through her first crush on a Grey Warden. Absolutely not, this is not happening. "You, King, person, you help him, I'm going to take Bethy to buy food."

Which leaves Alistair only half dressed in the shadows of Redcliffe Village, awkwardly staring at the King. Who is not his brother. Just some guy, who happens to be royal and also kind of looks like him. Not a big deal.

Well, this is terrible.

Cailan looks at Alistair looks right back at him, and suddenly they're alone for the first time in either of their lives, and just—really, Hawke? Really?

"Let's get that on you," Cailan says.

"That's really not necessary," he says, even though yes, it actually is. The cuirass is a pain to put on alone. It involves moving his shoulder in ways he's pretty sure the Maker never intended. He's going to be useless as it is in a fight; he doesn't need to add _broken arm_ to the list of problems.

He races through getting the rest of the armour on, if only to distract himself, but that doesn't work, does it. It leaves him staring down at the cuirass and knowing he has to get it on _somehow_.

"Alistair, let me help," Cailan says, and doesn't really give either of them time to think about it. He hoists the cuirass up, and then he's jamming it on, and it's probably painful, but if Cailan thinks out the fact that this is _younger brother_ being strapped into Templar armour, that terrible black rage rises, and he wants to go hunt something down and kill it.

"Maker," Cailan mutters, more to himself than to Alistair, "this is worse than the armour they commissioned for Ostagar. Who came _up_ with this?"

"Orlesians," Alistair said. "Remember who controls the Templars."

He's remembering things. All the awful things that were taught, that were discovered by recruits whispering things they shouldn't have ever heard but inevitably did, all of it's rushing back. The belfry begins its song for vespers and for a moment, it's like he never left the Chantry, still listening to the choir sing, still stuck with _everything_.

Maker, that was a miserable experience. Why would anyone actually _want_ to join the Templars?

"I swore I'd never put this armour back on," he says, very quietly. There goes _never_. Six months. Such a short _never_.

"You never should have had to put it on in the first place," Cailan tells him, just as quietly.

"Yeah, well, when rumour is you're Arl Eamon's bastard and his wife would like to see you dead for it, there's not much choice," he says, bitter on his tongue. "Especially when the alternative is admitting out loud who's bastard you _actually_ are."

Something very fierce tightens inside Cailan's chest. "I'm never going to forgive them. Any of them."

"It's not worth the energy," he sighs, tries not to think of the castle so close by and the little boy he never got the chance to know. "Am I free to go?"

"It should be worth the energy," Cailan shakes his head. "And I wouldn't—of course you are."

Alistair backs away, very nearly _slams_ the Templar helmet down over his face, and Cailan thinks he understands. Sometimes the world is too big to deal with, too dark, too _close_. There are still too many things that he doesn't understand, but Alistair's unwillingness to deal with Cailan isn't one of them.

Frankly, Cailan thinks it's half a miracle Anora put up with him for as long as she did. But only half, because she's run off, now, and the worst part is that he can't even _blame_ her for it.

On the worst days, Cailan thinks that he'd run away, too, if he had the chance.

Carver watches the not-Templar storm past him, and looks back to see the normally disheveled King looking like a hurricane just tore through him. He thinks that if he and Mar ever get that bad, he'd much rather just be put out of his misery. Fighting with a sibling is the _worst_ —Carver just doesn't like to think about it, okay? But that's also probably the problem with these two.

Actually, forget it. Not his problem.

"Who had the bright idea of putting these two together like this, anyway?" he asks, looking at his sisters.

"Not. Touching. It," Hawke repeats.

"Mar, don't be mean," Beth says, quietly. "Just—I'm going to talk to Alistair, alright? Try not to get into trouble while I'm gone?"

"That means I'd have to stop being myself," Hawke says, voice sorrowful, "and I don't think I can do that, Bethy, I really don't."

" _Try_ ," says Bethany, and then turns to take off after him. He's not hard to find; the armour shines in the offensive-bright sunlight. That's how it always is, after storms, as though the sun is trying to make up for nearly letting them all die from exposure.

She follows him all the way down to the docks.

He really does look out of place, silverite armour a white gleam. There's nothing _subtle_ about Templar armour, is the thing—you can see them coming a mile away. And Beth's spent so much of her life running and hiding, letting words bubble out of her to get herself out of trouble in any way she can, because Maker knows the last thing she wants is to be trapped in that prison of a Tower. Even from here she can see the dark blur of it on the horizon, and the sight alone sends a shudder down her spine.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks, very softly.

"I don't know if I can," he admits. There's no easy way to sit down in this armour; Maker, he _hates_ it, but there's a reason and, well, the others are going to have to wander down here eventually if they want to catch the ferry.

He's always liked the docks. It's open, the buildings falling away to reveal fresh air, blue skies, and a lake that seems to go on forever. It's easier to think here.

"We can just be quiet, then," Beth says. She looks out over the water, the sky reflecting golden-blue. And the lake's so _clear_ here, all the little silver fishes darting down in the depths; she can feel the magic that's sunk into the ground over the Ages. It's soaked the bedrock, singing nonsense tales of little girls and the drowning boys who'd loved them, and Beth sinks down to dip her fingers into the lakewater like the magical waste doesn't matter at all.

"No," he's finding words to be a bit difficult here, "I don't—the quiet makes it worse?"

Quiet is silent nights in the stables, looking out into the shadows and wondering where the big brother he's not supposed to know is. It's wondering what it would be like to be a trueborn son, raised in a palace where it's never cold or wet or smelly. Quiet is the later nights in the Chantry, when the stone walls were dead silent and thinking that maybe if he had been trueborn, he wouldn't have to go to bed hungry and there'd always be a friend nearby if the silence got to be too much.

Quiet is a lot of thoughts he really, really doesn't want right now.

"I guess I can understand that," she says. "I never said thank you, for yesterday. Mari told me I fell off my horse, and that you realized before anyone else. I don't remember it, but, well, I appreciate it."

"It's nothing," he shrugs. "When you join the Wardens, you learn quickly to pay attention to your surroundings, especially any mages. Lose your mage and you could lose your life, is what Duncan's always saying."

"I'm not a Warden, though," she says. There's something about the water… Beth stirs it twice before she realizes she's not using her fingers, and that if someone sees her making the water move with just her brain, there would be hell to pay. She backs away, shaking her head to free herself of the strange thrall of it. "And if my sister has anything to say about it, I never will be."

"But I still am," he says, looking down at the water. There's an unnatural sheen to it, the centuries of magic finally taking its toll. "Even if I'm travelling with other people, I'm still a Warden. I still have to look out for everyone, especially if there's a Blight."

Beth flicks her fingers at him, droplets arcing to sprinkle across his face. "Has anyone ever told you that you're too serious?"

"Usually I'm told I'm too flippant," he says, crooked grin working lighting up his features. "Please don't tell anyone about this, it'll ruin the idiot persona I've worked so hard to build."

"Well, there's your problem, isn't it," Beth says, lips curling into a smile. "You've gone and convinced everyone that you're not listening, but that's not true, is it."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," he's teasing, an easy thing to do when there's an ugly blackness winding it's way around his spine, poisoning everything it touches. He'd thought the taint would be the worst he ever encountered. Who knew fami—that dealing with something as simple as this would be so, so much worse.

"Oh, is that you doing it now?" she asks, blinking at him. "You're teasing, but it doesn't reach your eyes."

"Do you always try to dismantle people you've just met, or is it just me?"

"Sorry," Bethany tilts her head at him, honestly not sorry at all. "It's a bad habit. But I _can_ keep a secret, so as long as you don't try it on me too often, no one will know."

"I can't promise that," he says, shrugging. "I've been doing it so long by this point, I don't usually notice."

"That's a little upsetting," she points out. "A lot upsetting, actually, no matter how you look at it. But… I guess I'm not one to talk."

"Let's just say I didn't have a happy childhood and leave it at that," he offers. There's a shadow growing on the horizon. Whether it's the ferry or just a ship returning from the tower, there's no way to know. Or maybe it's a monster, the magic in the lake finally bonding together to create some awful distortion of a fish. He hopes it's the boat. Templar armour and lakeside battles never, ever go well.

Beth takes in a tiny, sharp breath. There's the ferry, so close and so far, and a skein of dread tightens around her throat. She knows how this is going to go down, but—

"How are the others going to get on?" she asks, softly. "You and me, we're, well, look at us, we'll make sense. But my sister and Carver and, and His Majesty, I… how are we going to manage this?"

"I don't have the papers needed to get us all the way to Kirkwall," he admits, very quietly. The mana-draining cuffs are heavy in his hand. "So this is where I start apologizing profusely and ask that you not hate me."

"I'm going to have to wear shackles, aren't I," she sighs.

"Unfortunately, yes," he says. "I wish there was another way, but without those papers, the only way to do this is to say I had to hire outside help. And that would mean that you're dangerous, and any normal Templar would have a mage like that restrained."

She laughs an ugly sound that rips its way out of her chest, too jagged to be real. "They'll probably think I'm maleficar."

"If you were a maleficar, no one would have bothered arresting you," he says. "So you'll just be a very creative mage with a little too much experience in the primal school."

"Which is," she shakes her head, "ironically, true."

He nods. "The best lies are the ones based in truth, aren't they?"

"That's what they say," she says, so quietly, and pulls in a breath. She offers him her wrists. "Shall we, then?"

"I am so sorry," he says, hands gentle on her wrists. He pulls her just a little closer, needs a better view to make sure the cuffs are on properly. This is going to be painful as it is. No reason to make it worse by accidentally catching her skin in the lock. "I really am sorry, but this is going to hurt. You'll be regenerating mana at the same time that these are draining it, so just… brace yourself?"

The cuffs latch closed, and pain shocks through her. It's like everything is on _fire_ , the magic in her blood _screaming_ at this latest offense against its person. It _rebels_ inside her, throwing itself at the cuffs, _make them explode, destroy them, how dare they, how dare they!_ Beth sways, trying to force it down and away, box it up, compress, compress, _compress_ —

"Ow," she says, breathy and high. "That's—unpleasant?"

"You'll only make it worse by fighting it," he tells her, smiles a little sadly. "I am sorry. I wish there was another way."

Alistair has only seen these cuffs in use once before, and seeing the pain obvious in every line of Bethany's face reminds him of exactly why his faith in the Templars started to crack. The older Templars who had been controlling that mage, the actual _glee_ they felt at seeing another human being hurt because of something beyond their control—he didn't understand it then and he doesn't understand it now. He'd rather there be no Maker at all than there be one who so sincerely wants to see those of His own making in this much pain.

"I'm not going to be able to help you stay standing," he says very, very quietly, "and no one else is either. You're going to have to do that part on your own. If I have to do it and there's someone around to see, you could end up getting hurt."

"It's fine," Beth says, though her teeth are grit together. "I don't need help."

"You'll have these on until we're clear of the Tower," he explains. "It should get easier as time goes on, but just in case it doesn't, you'll need to be prepared. I am sorry, Bethany."

She chokes out a laugh, drops her head back with a sick-sounding _crack_. Even beyond the pain, the cuffs are heavy—she'd not been prepared for that, but maybe she should have been. "Carver's going to have a _fit_."

"He can take it up with your sister," Alistair grimaces. _He_ intends on having a few words with the eldest Hawke. This plan is sound, yes, but if she ever tries to get him to do this again, he's going to take the breastplate and introduce it to her head.

Beth actually giggles at that, weird and weak, and leans over to nudge an elbow into his side. "She'll probably just agree with him."

He almost nudges her back, a habitual action, but at the last moment, the thinks of what he's wearing and doesn't. Armour against the thin mail she's wearing? No, no thank you. If he's going to be facing off against the giant that is Carver Hawke, he'd rather not give the young man any more reason. "This was her idea. She's not allowed to object."

"Actually, it was mine," Beth tells him. The pain's lessened, now, a little, but moving still hurts. Maker, is this what they put _all_ apostates though? No wonder no one ever wants to go; even beyond losing all sense of freedom, to get there you have to wear _these_. "Who's idea do you think it was, to knock a Templar out and steal their armour? Mari would have just killed them and been done with it. Me… not so much."

"So I should send all objections to you to deal with?" Alistair asks. Maker, this girl is _insane_. Flirt with Templars, impersonate an apostate being arrested by a Templar, hang out in the Chantry—does she have no sense of self-preservation at all?

"If you must," she says. The ferry looms closer, a long flat-bottomed thing of rough-hewn wood. Her face falls into a kind of frozen neutrality. "I'm sorry, Alistair," she tells him, voice distant, "but you're going to have to go get my sister and the others. I don't think I can move very far—hurts too much."

"I know. I am sorry about that," he says, voice low as people begin to gather on the docks. Not many, but that's unsurprising. There will be more at the northern docks, waiting to travel to Redcliffe. He's in a bit of a bind, though, regarding that. The mana-draining cuffs are easily visible; they're meant to be an obvious sign that _hey look, here's a mage!_ He can't just _leave_ her here alone, not when there's a risk that a real Templar could see her.

Carver is the first to spot the flash of too-bright silverite. His sister and the King stay close to him, the latter hunched over in a pitiful attempt to disguise his sheer size, the hood pulled low. With any luck, they'll be able to pass him off as hillfolk. Well, an abnormally _tall_ hillfolk. They still walk around with cloaks like that, hiding from the stares of everyone around them, don't they?

And then he sees Bethany.

White swallows up the world, anger flaring brighter than any silverite armour, because that is his sister, in pain, in those _shackles_ and he made a promise that he would never, _ever_ see her in those. Not in the company of someone in that—

— _breathe_. It's just Alistair, just one of his sister's harebrained ideas. It's not—Bethany isn't going to the Tower. This is to keep her out. This is to keep her out of the Tower. This is to keep Beth _safe_.

He glares at Mar, jaw clenching painfully, and reminds himself again that this is all for Beth.

"She's fine," Hawke says, very quietly, casting a glance at her brother. He's _glowering_. At this rate he's going to frighten everyone around them off, though maybe that's a good thing. "She's strong, and you know why we're doing this."

"Doesn't mean I have to like it," he growls, low and quiet so only she can hear it. He moves quickly to Beth's side, keeping her safely between him and Alistair. It'll be better that way, if he can easily keep an eye on her, if he can even scare off _one_ Templar who might try to approach them.

"Carver," Beth murmurs, the comfort of having him close a balm against the blister of the mana-draining cuffs around her wrists. She can't help the way she slumps into him, even though she can feel the way he's bristling all over like a wounded porcupine—she can't touch him, she knows, because that would kill the ruse before it's even begun, but still her shoulders go down. "Carver, shh, I'm fine."

"Let's just get this over with," he says, not daring to look at her.

 _He's never going to forgive me for this_ , Beth reflects.

Behind her painfully-codependent siblings, the King of the realm is doing his very best to disappear into the woodwork. It's not going very well; Hawke doesn't think she's ever seen someone so large appear so conspicuous.

"You're quite terrible at this hiding thing, aren't you," she says, and it's not a question. Cailan stares at her miserably from within the shadow of his hood, and Hawke shakes her head, decides to take pity on him. "Oh, stop looking like I've kicked your cat. Straighten your spine, you're tall enough that people will think you're Qunari if you keep your hood up."

He does, and immediately looks less like he's some constipated hunchback. Hawke reaches up to pat his shoulder—the fact that she has to reach up alone will convince half the people on the pier that he's some mad creature—her sympathy near tangible.

"What do they _feed_ you in Denerim?" she asks, because, _honestly_.

"I wish I knew," he says, jerks his head at where Carver's hovering anxiously at Beth's side, looking nothing so much as a deeply concerned guard dog, "because I think your brother's had some, too."

"You're all unnatural," Hawke mutters. "Are you ready to play mercenary?"

"Not even a little bit," Cailan tells her.

"Oh, fantastic. This is going to be _so much fun_!" and she doesn't _cackle_ so much as she—cackles, that's really the only word for the way she sounds. Hawke sweeps her hair back, cracks all her knuckles, and ambles off to stand with her siblings. The family resemblance between them is stark for a moment; she and Carver share colouring and eye-colour, and a certain way of standing that speaks of military training. Bethany, on the other hand, looks nothing like either of them. She's round-faced and curly-haired and her mouth is drawn down; she watches the ferry draw towards them with the look of a woman going to her own death.

Cailan stands at their backs, a hulking shadow, and with Alistair in his Templar armour, they very much look like a group of mercenaries, taking the unfortunate mage girl between them to somewhere far worse than here.

This is it. This is where he gets to lie and fake his way across a ferry that will inevitably be more Templar than normal person. If they make it through this without him landing in front of the Grand Cleric, it will be a _miracle_.

Alistair takes hold of Bethany's upper arm—gingerly, because Maker he doesn't want to hurt her, but he's supposed to be a Templar and he _knows_ that showing mercy is going to get them so busted so fast—and leads her onto the ferry. This early in the ruse, no one will ask for papers. Why should they? It's only going to be at the Tower landing that there will be a problem. Right now, it just looks like he's here to take someone to Kinloch.

 _Calm down_ , he tells himself. It's just until the northern docks. Given the location of the sun right now, that'll be sometime before dawn. Still dark enough that hiding will be easy enough and then he'll be back in his own armour.

Assuming they still _have_ his armour.

If Hawke left it behind in Redcliffe… Alistair tries not to think of that. Tries instead, to think of Duncan and whether or not the former thief would find any of this amusing. Probably not, because of the aforementioned risk of _Grand Cleric_. But it'll still make for a good story, won't it?

"Sit," he says quietly, pushing Bethany down to a crude bench aboard the boat. It's out in the open; Maker, _please_ don't let it rain again. Not an ideal seat, but at least it's close to the ferry's edge. If they have to escape, it can be done faster from here than from deeper in the ferry.

Beth looks up at him, eyes blazing. "Don't _touch_ me."

Pain lances up from her wrists, and she breathes through it. Magic reacts to emotion—and it's finally sinking in that she's wearing mana-draining cuffs, on a ship bound ostensibly to the Circle. It occurs to her, belatedly, that she is officially _useless_ in a fight. Oh, Maker, _Maker_ , when is she going to _learn_? She's struck with a kind of creeping paralysis, out of beat with the rest of the world, crumbling apart in slow motion. The blood leaves her face, and she can feel her magic flare, drain, flare again.

 _This is what it's like for other people_ , she thinks, the hollow haunting _emptiness_ inside that threatens to engulf her whole. If she could get these cuffs off, she could set this whole _boat_ alight, sink it to the bottom of the lake, _burn_ them for ever letting this _happen_ —

Carver sits down on his sister's other side, not touching her but still close enough to feel the tiny vibrations in the air as the reality of what is going on starts to sink in. He takes a deep breath, pushes it out through his nose and adjusts the sword on his back until it's visible to anyone who passes by. If she's going to be like this the entire trip then, well, nothing for it. He'll just have to stay calm as he can, steady the way she usually is.

He looks at her, covers it with a glance out to the receding docks and silently prays that nothing goes wrong between here and the northern docks. She's gone wide-eyed nervous and if not for those cuffs, he wouldn't be surprised in the slightest to see lightning arcing off her body like the world's most vicious shield. It's not going to anyone any good if the burning white-hot fury seeping into his bloodstream is allowed to run free.

"Don't think about it," he says very, very quietly, still looking over his shoulder at the docks. "You're always telling me that thinking about it makes it worse, so stop it."

"I'm not thinking," she breathes the words more than she speaks them, drops her head so that her face is shadowed. "I'm trying to figure out how Mari learned to pick locks."

"Because she's evil incarnate," he murmurs, turning back to face the ferry. He crosses his arms over his chest and _glares_ at everyone in their general vicinity.

"Better evil incarnate than… than _this_ ," she says. Her wrists itch. It's like all her blood has rushed to the skin there, the pound of her pulse in time with the _slop_ of the tide against the shore. Beth rotates her hands, scratches, _scratches_. The cuffs provide a sharp edge, but it's not enough. She does it again, again, again.

By the time this is over, she's going to be raw-wristed and bled dry, and _still_ she will have willingly worn these things. Oh, Maker.

"Stop that," Alistair murmurs, wishes he could say it nicer than that. He can see the red starting to spread out from beneath the cuffs, ugly bold against her skin. "You'll break your wrist if you aren't careful."

"That's the point," she says, fighting with the urge to dig her nails into her thighs. "If I get a hand out, I'll—" she cuts herself off with a tiny feral sound at the back of her throat. "—I'll still be sitting here."

He reaches over, gloved hand covering both of hers. Was she always that _small_? "Exactly. Stop fighting and it won't hurt as much," he says. There's not as much concern for being quiet, though he still is. Carver's glowering has scared everyone off. "It's too late to change the plan now."

"This will be pointless if you ruin it now, Beth," Carver breathes. This whole thing is a terrible idea. They should have just taken the Imperial Highway along the western coast of the lake. Longer travel time, but less chance of going tits up. Last thing they need is for Bethany's fear to get the worst of her, because that would push him over the edge and then they'd likely have a dead Bethany and probably a dead King, if not a dead _everyone_. Which ruins the entire reason for even attempting this.

Goodbye Ferelden, you were beautiful while you lasted.

"Remember who's with us," he mutters.

"It'd be authentic, though," Beth murmurs, "me freaking out."

"It could destroy the kingdom."

"I hate it when you're right."

"Quiet, the both of you," Hawke says. Her arms are crossed over her chest, tapping one foot. She's got the sharp look of a killer in her eyes. Her siblings are going to get them all caught—this is the reason she'd much prefer to leave them at home. "Carver, leave the mage alone. We have a job to do."

"Ah, but it's fun to tease her," he says, does his best to imitate her mercenary-murderer grin.

"And I'm sure it'll be fun when she blows you up. You'd deserve it, too," Hawke says, dismissive, and glances down to see her sister's mouth open and bared in a snarl full of teeth. _Ah_ , she thinks, _there's my girl_. "Leave her alone, if you keep it up we'll tip the boat."

Carver's brow furrows. It isn't until his sister tips her head toward the other passengers that he realizes what she means. "I doubt I'm the reason they're all over there," he says.

"You sure about that, mate?" Cailan asks, very quiet. He stands like a giant off to the side—Maker, do they not know what they look like? Carver's near as big as he is, Hawke looks like she kills men for fun and profit, and Alistair is wearing _full Templar regalia_. Not to mention the little mage sitting between them, half-mad with the shackles around her wrists, tiny and dangerous.

They're a mental little group, and everyone around them can _see_ it.

"All of you, please _shut up_ ," Alistair says, his voice still muffled by the helmet. People are staring. That's not good. If people think they're weird, or overheard something, then the Templars will ask questions. Templars asking questions can make this all go very wrong very quickly. Things tend to die when Templars ask questions. It's a horrible habit, but no one would ever _listen_ to him when he was still in the Order. "Try and get some rest, will you?"

Bethany slumps forwards, hair curling limply around her face. There's blood soaking into the white of her skirt. She's never going to be able to get it out.

(That it's her own blood is a little morbid, but, well. Blood is blood is blood, and maleficar are maleficar are maleficar. She's not going to lick it away, because who _does_ things like that?)

In all his years of living in Redcliffe, Alistair never actually rode the ferry. That was for important people, not bastards living in the stables. It's an odd experience, absolutely terrifying if the fact that he is wearing _platemail_ is taken into account. Why Templars in the middle of the lake is a good idea, he has no idea. It seems like a death trap to him.

How many Templars are down there, drowned because the armour they stubbornly wear to show the world that they've got absolutely _nothing_ to compensate for is too heavy and too difficult to take off in a pinch? Does the magic in the lake sink into their bones as the bodies rot away, leaving skeletal warriors still in that damnable armour just waiting for the time when someone will realize they're there and call them up?

That'd be one hell of a rebellion. He doubts Kinloch would survive it. A Circle Tower torn down from the bottom up by the angry remains of those once sworn to protect it.

But that's a morbid thought.

The ferry ride is mostly quiet, a nervous knife-fight silence only broken by the _splash-slop_ of the water against the hull. If anybody actually manages to sleep, it'll be a verified miracle. There's a cramp in his leg by the time they pass by the miserable little dock where a slumped inn proudly proclaims itself to be The Spoiled Princess. Though, if there's anything spoiled in there, it's probably just a—yeah, no, that's an even _more_ morbid thought than the ghost Templars breaking down the Tower.

Which is very close. Painfully close. It makes his heart seize up, thinking of how close he came to actually being in this position of actually arresting a mage as sweet and charming as Bethany to actually take her to this very place. The sun is almost beneath the horizon, hazy bruised gold heavy in the air as the make the last leg of the journey to the Kinloch Hold.

(Maker, give him strength. Andraste, he takes back everything negative he's ever said about you, just _please let this work_.)

Hawke watches the inn shrink behind them as they cross the lake.

(Hey, she went drinking there, once. Started a fight, too, but that's a totally different story. They were cultists. Probably.)

Something's prickling at her, the peculiar sensation of being watched spidering across the back of her neck. She can't quite figure out where it's coming from, and so she stares coolly at all the other passengers.

But they all avoid her gaze.

The Circle Tower looms high above them. Hawke's not impressed, honestly. It's an indistinguishable-coloured tall stone building rising out of the lake like a jagged wound. There are no windows and only one set of doors that she can see, and the air nears _hums_ as they get closer to it; the crackle- _pop_ of magic tastes like burned sugar on her tongue. But it's still not enough to keep her from noting three separate escape routes, and only _one_ of them involves scaling the building.

(Hawke makes a mental note to tell Beth about them, later, once they're away from this place. Just in case. Of course, if Beth ever _does_ end up in a Circle, Hawke has no doubt that Carver will tear Thedas apart to find her.)

Cailan looks up.

And up, and up, and up.

" _This_ is Kinloch Hold?" he asks, very quietly.

"The one and only," Alistair responds. Maker, he swears this Tower gets more and more disturbing the older he gets. It's like _hello, welcome, leave your dreams at the shore and prepare for hell_. Once upon a time, it was simply _wow, that's a tall tower_. He'll be a happy man if this is the last time he ever sees this place.

"It looks like a place where dreams go to die," Cailan says, frowning up at it. It's a _prison_ , is what it is. The little mage is the only one in shackles, but he has a feeling she's not the only one here to be shunted into a Circle. It's a hollowness behind the eyes—there's at least two other passengers here who've got that look to them.

And Cailan understands the need for the Circle. He understands that it has a purpose. He even understands that in some cases, it's necessary.

But he can't see how it's necessary to lock people away from their families.

And that brings him right back to Alistair. Because of course it does. These things always come full circle, don't they.

(Full circle, full Circle; it would be funny if it weren't quite so sad.)

"Supposedly this is one of the nice ones," Alistair says, sits up a little straighter at the sight of Templars waiting for the ferry. "As nice as a prison can be, at least."

They dock carefully beside the Tower, like the magic resonating off the building could destroy the ferry. It's silly, so silly. It's a _prison_. There aren't even any windows, which can't be healthy, don't people need sunshine? He's pretty sure people need sunshine to be healthy.

And then there are Templars everywhere, ushering people off and—how did he miss that there was a _Tranquil on the ferry_?!—and then there's one, a young one, vaguely familiar this one is, standing right in front of him. Short blonde hair, brown eyes, probably not much younger than Alistair himself is. He just can't remember a _name_.

"Do you want me to take her?" he asks.

Alistair shakes his head, does not trust himself to stand. "Wrong Circle. This one's going to the Gallows."

(That name still tastes like iron on his tongue. Even now, so long after the stories faded. But that's just it, isn't it. The stories never faded. Stories like that _never_ fade away.)

The Templar looks at him, nervous-wry smile. "Lost your papers?"

"First recovery from another country," Alistair shrugs, "and this one's a bit feisty. Had to get local help."

"Andraste, I just want to get this over with and get paid," Hawke says, slowly, casting her eyes over the rest of the passengers exactly the way she would if she _were_ looking for potential employers. Mercenaries have so few qualms about who they take gold from; any other day, and she'd think they were almost smart.

She smiles at the Templar. "Runaways. You know how they are."

"Kirkwall, you said?" the Templar squints at her. "Are you an Amell?"

"No, I'm a Hawke," she says, smile growing, because what better way to distract from the fact that he knows her mother's maiden name? "Oh, but you're _cute_ , aren't you?"

His face flushes bright red. "S-sorry. It's just… you look a lot like one of the mages here and I just wondered if you were related since she's originally from Kirkwall. It was a stupid question."

"A stupid question from a stupid boy," she tells him, has to resist the urge to reach out and pat his head. He really _is_ cute, in the same way a dopey puppy is cute. "It's alright, love, you don't need to worry about me, I'm no Kirkwaller. Just a mercenary."

"R-right," he says, turns to Alistair. "Sorry if I've held you up. Have a safe trip. They say things are getting ugly to the north."

Alistair nods, very slowly. There's a thickness in his chest, a vague sense that he's missing something important. "Thank you, I'll keep that in mind. May the Maker be with you."

"And with you," the Templar smiles nervously, doesn't look at Hawke—odd, that—and _finally_ leaves.

Getting back on the barge is a study in patience that Hawke doesn't have. There's a horrible little laugh bubbling in her throat, a hysteric thing that plays out on her lips. "Maker, did you see him, I bet he would have sat up and begged if I'd told him to. But that name, Amell… Carver, isn't that—"

"Maria, stop it," Carver says. _Oh hell no_ they are not dealing with this, not now. Mother's family can wait for another day when Beth doesn't have to face down Templars on their home turf and they do not have the _King of Ferelden_ with them. "We're not going back there, not to deal with family shit when we just got through there safely. We can check it out later, okay?"

"Carver?" comes Beth's voice, wavering. "I—I think I'm dying?"

He leans back against the boat, peering over the edge and _accidentally_ bumping into Bethany in the process. "Think about Dog at the rabbit warren, getting into Old Barlin's chickens. Or Sister Leliana's stories. Think about those. Do you remember the one about that mage? What was his name, Split? Screech?"

She's shaking. That isn't good. He's seen soldiers like this, after facing darkspawn for the first time. It's a haunted hollow look, fear in every tremble, like being locked in a nightmare while wide awake. Soldiers have _died_ from things like this.

Alistair looks back at the receding Tower; they're still too close for him to—screw it, there's only the captain aboard the ferry now, aside from them. He reaches over and quickly undoes the cuffs, letting them drop heavily onto the deck. Her wrists are angry raw, flesh rubbed to the point of bleeding. "What's the mage's name, Bethany?"

"Sketch," she breathes, too high, too fast, her throat's closing up, everything inside's gone knotted and tight and her lungs _squeeze_ , she can't breathe, can't breathe, can't _breathe_ — "His name was Sketch."

"What'd he do?"

"Ran away," she gets out, and there are tears, now, thick things that clog her throat, oh, Maker. "Val Royeaux, the White Spire, he—he ran—"

"This is stupid," Carver mutters, because screw the Templars, screw the Chantry. He pulls Beth close, holds her rattling frame close to him. She's so tiny against him. Too tiny, too fragile. Maker, why is Marian so _useless_. This was a shit idea. Terrible, really. They should have just taken the western road along the shore.

"Carver," Hawke says, voice gone dead quiet, "let her go. She needs to breathe."

She kneels down next to the pair of them, very gently curls a hand around Beth's cheek. "Beth?" she asks, "Bethy? Bethy, love, listen, can you look at me?"

Beth's still shaking, the tremble to her limbs so violent, now, that her entire body is vibrating. But she looks up, because in the end she still trusts her older sister to keep her safe, and Bethany doesn't know how _not_ to listen when Mar tells her to do something.

"There you are," Hawke says, softly, and she's smiling just a little. "I know, shh, I know. Breathe with me, okay?"

"W-what?"

"Breathe with me," Hawke says again. "In and out, alright? There's no one here but you and me and Carver. Just us three. C'mon, breathe, Bethy, breathe. In and out. In. Out. _In_ , Beth, breathe in. There's a good girl, shh, we've got you."

They sit like that for a very long time, and Beth concentrates on breathing, _in and out_ , inhaling to the count of seven, exhaling to the count of eleven. Her sister's voice in her ear, the rhythmic sound of waves against the hull, and the breathing, the breathing, inhale, expand, exhale, contract, back and forth and back and forth and _back_ —

(—and oh Maker, they'd been so close, and there's blood on her dress, her wrists _hurt_ , her magic curls low in her stomach, and it wants to burn, to burn, to _burn_ , she needs somewhere small and dark so she can shake herself to pieces and forget that this _ever happened_ —)

—but in the end, it's the constant pound of Carver's heart that brings her back. Beth knows the sound of Carver's heart better than she knows her own, the pulse of his blood as familiar and dear as her own self. The _th-thud th-thud_ of it pulls her back, anchors her back into her body.

Andraste, what would she ever do without her twin?

"I'm okay," Beth whispers, a long time later. "I'm okay now."

Carver presses a kiss against her hair. "Good. I'd hate to have to burn down the kingdom we're trying to save."

Beth curls into him, pulls her older sister down with her until they're nothing more than a pile of limbs and dark hair, too tangled up to know where who begins and who ends. "Just, stay," she almost begs, "for a little while. Please."

"Always, Buttercup," he says.

"Don't be weird, Carver," Hawke murmurs, an exhausted smile crawling over her face. Beth used to have episodes like these when she has a child before her magic settled; an awful wild panic that took her over and sent her to shaking and crying. It's been years since she's had one, and Hawke thinks somehow this one was worse. "Bethy, are you really alright?"

Beth nods. Her eyelids are drooping. "M'sleepy."

"Get some rest," Carver says. "We're not going anywhere."

Alistair watches all of this, or tries not to, from the other side of the barge. When the shaking got really bad and even Hawke was looking worried, he'd figured it time to give the family some space.

Which meant grabbing their other companion and going far away, but still in sight.

Well, that was _brilliant._ He sighs and pulls off the helmet, the lake wind a calming balm against his face. He'd only meant to let the Hawke family have some alone time. He never meant for _this_ , whatever _this_ is, what is he saying. There is no _this_ because for _this_ to be _anything_ would be admitting that the blood in his (their) veins actually means _something_.

Which it _doesn't_.

"I used to get seasick," Cailan says, rather unexpectedly.

"That's… interesting?" Alistair has no idea what he's supposed to say to that. What on earth. Is this how the King does small talk? That's an amazing knack for making things awkward. No wonder Ferelden is facing civil war.

Cailan laughs, a little embarrassed. "No, it's just—if this was a decade ago, I'd have puked by now. Which is disgusting, but still true."

"I'm not at all sure what to say?" Alistair says, because really. His choices are _you're really bad at this talking to people thing aren't you_ and well, trying to have a conversation. A real conversation. With the King. Who looks freakishly like him and is in no way important. Just the King of his home country. Nothing more.

"I get that less often than you'd think," Cailan mutters. He shifts his weight, trying to stretch out the tight knot of nerves in his stomach. "Not usually this terrible at conversation."

"You should probably work on that, given where you're going," Alistair says. Nothing works here, does it? Silence is more awkward than the Grand Cleric's disapproving stare and he'd rather face darkspawn than indulge the gnawing curiosity about the King.

(Curiosity is a powerful thing, though.)

Finally, after a long moment, he quietly admits, "This is my first time being on a boat."

"Really?" Cailan blinks at him. "You're handling it better than I did."

"I think it's more the idea of wearing platemail while in the middle of the lake is kind of terrifying?" Alistair says, tries not to think about what's going on here. This is not a conversation.

"Do you ever wonder who came up with platemail?" Cailan asks the sky. "I think they must have enjoyed cruelty. Or at least, they must have enjoyed watching people stumble around like drunken children."

"I try to not think about platemail," Alistair tells him. "Platemail is Templar armour, which is Chantry stuff, and the Circle."

"There are other kinds of platemail," Cailan says, thinks about his own set of platemail back at Ostagar, golden and shining in the sun. Beautiful craftsmanship, absolutely shit usefulness. If he doesn't die in that armour, he'll be a happy man.

"None that I've worn."

"Sometimes they even look nice," Cailan sighs. "But that's about all they do."

"It's just about making power look pretty," he says, looks down at the sword of mercy emblazoned on the breastplate. So much beauty spent to conceal something so very, very ugly. "Something beautiful shouldn't make people frightened at first glance."

"Unfortunately," Cailan says, very quiet, "that's mostly what politics are about."

Well, that hits a little too close to the heart. Alistair takes a deep breath, coy sweetness of the lake cut with the fresh wind blowing in from the north. "I never wanted any of it," he says, just as quiet. "Not the Chantry, not the Wardens, but above all, I never wanted to be a part of _that_."

"What, politics?" Cailan asks. At the tiny inclination of Alistair's head, an awful little grin lights his face. "No one wants to be part of politics. It means empty marriages and long parties full of Orlesians. Not a fun way to go through life."

"That may be," Alistair says, "but there are times I've thought I'd take all the politics for a chance at normalcy. I'll admit that."

"Normalcy?" Cailan asks. "What do you mean?"

"You don't get a chance at a family with the any of the groups I've been with," and well, that's not a thing he's ever said aloud before. There goes the _no conversation_ thing. "At least with politics you do."

"There's no guarantee of family, even then," Cailan says, mouth twisting. He looks out over the water, very carefully doesn't think of Anora, doesn't think of the way her eyes would narrow any time someone made a joke about children, the way she used to sit with her hands folded in her lap and the way she'd said, three days before the wedding, _if we're doing this, neither of us will ever be happy_. "I know that better than anyone."

"But at least there's a _chance_ ," Alistair tilts his head back, looks up at the twinkle of stars peeking out from the curtain of night. "That's better odds than I've had so far."

Cailan doesn't really have a reply for that; odds are, Alistair is going to end up being luckier than Cailan himself has been, in that department. It's not hard to be, when you go and marry your oldest friend even though you knew from the start that you'd never be able to think of her as anything but a sister. And even though he knows that it had made sense at the time, he can't help but wonder if there hadn't been a better way. Anora is a sharp vicious thing even now, all her prickly edges turned jagged in that last letter. _As if I'd ever care what they said, but Cailan, I can't stand what this is doing to you anymore_ —

Maker, he misses her.

"But," Alistair sighs, "I guess that's what happens when you sell your life to a group hell-bent on destroying an unstoppable evil, just so you can get away from the annoying self-righteous group that sucks all the fun out of everything."

"A rock and a hard place," Cailan grins out of the corner of his mouth. "You need to spend some time with nobles. You'd never believe it, but they're worse than darkspawn."

"Darkspawn are at least predictable," and he is not smiling. _He is not smiling_. "I'll give them that."

" _And_ you can kill them without offending anyone," Cailan says. He stops to think about it for a second. "And, you know, darkspawn don't even talk. They go about trying to destroy civilization, but at least they're _honest_ about it."

"Actually—" Alistair starts, but then falls silents. There are still some things about the darkspawn that are secret, after all. Duncan probably wouldn't be happy if he told the King everything. "Never mind. It's nothing."

(This is an absolutely lie. Duncan is the type who wouldn't care. Alistair knows this. He's still going to use it as an excuse.)

Cailan looks down at him. There's something in Alistair's face, something _haunted_ , and he lets it drop because letting it drop is easier than pushing and frightening the other man. This might be the most words they've spoken to each other, well, _ever_ ; he's not about to ruin it by being obtuse. Dusk is edging into true night, purple creeping across the horizon to blend into blue into navy into black around the dome of the world.

"Do you think we should go interrupt them?" he asks, nods in the direction of the Hawke siblings. "Or would that be rude?"

Alistair takes a careful look at the siblings, squashes the bitter green that tries to flood his veins at the sight of it. Bethany looks like she's asleep, with Carver close to it. It would be easy, probably better, to wake them up. They have no idea what to expect when they reach the northern docks, if that Templar is right about the conditions.

Half asleep, exhausted fighters, or groggy, still waking up fighters, should it come to it?

"Leave them," he decides. "It'll be almost morning before we reach the docks. We could all use some rest."

It's not going to be a comfortable kind of sleep, Cailan knows. The barge doesn't have anything in the way of creature comforts, and even less in the way of places to rest. And he's still too awake, honestly—if he sleeps at all in the next week, he's going to be surprised. Plus, the dark rings below Alistair's eyes speak of someone who'd crash and sleep for a week, given half a chance.

"It's been a rough day. I'll take first watch," Cailan says. "Get some rest."

—

Beth wakes to sunlight on her face, and to the strangest sensation that she's being watched. There are a tangle of arms and legs and bodies all curled around her—Carver and Mari, presumably—still heavy with the wash of sleep. She has to wiggle, a little, to extract herself from them.

She sits up, and looks around.

Beth's never been one of those people who can't remember how they got somewhere, when she wakes up. She's always been one of the unfortunate ones who wake up with the precise knowledge of where they are and how they got there—but the northern docks come as something of a shock. After _yesterday_ (and this is how she will always think of it, later: _then_ , or _that day_ , or _once upon a time_ ), she expected she'd be too on-edge to sleep, much less sleep so long and so soundly that she didn't wake for near the entire journey across the lake.

She has to struggle to stand, pushing Carver's clinging grip and Mari's knees off in the process. Her wrists still hurt; looking at them brings bile up her throat. They're still rubbed raw. The memory of the cuffs is still a loaded thing, the silver-grey of them around her wrists inscribed with glowing runes. The pain is all but gone, but then, she thinks that pain has an element of blank: there is no beginning nor an ending, only an existence, and once it exists, one cannot remember a time before it.

Beth breathes in.

Maker, she's glad she invested in basic healing skills.

"You feeling okay?" Alistair asks, stepping gingerly across the ferry. It's morning, they really should wake up, but after yesterday…

Though, Marian Hawke still owes him new armour. He's not wearing this beyond this boat, not after what he saw when he decided to look out at the docks. Soldiers, soldiers, and more soldiers. A mix of uniforms. Surprisingly, none from Highever, unless they're not wearing the iconic green heraldry on their shields anymore.

Needless to say, he's not stepping off this boat until he's wearing something less conspicuous. He'd like to _try_ to avoid scrutiny.

"I am sorry about yesterday," he says, very quietly. "I wish there had been a better way."

"Oh, no," Beth says, shaking her head. There's a tired little smile curling across her face, an exhausted sort of thing that probably makes no sense to anyone but her. "No, I'm—I'm fine. It hardly even hurts, see?"

She raises her hands for his inspection, fingers glittering white-blue with healing magic. They're still far enough from shore that it'll look like nothing except one more slick of sunlight off the water, and the Captain is turned away; not that it matters, if he'd really cared about her magic then he'd have turned them around right as soon as Alistair had taken the cuffs off last night and not given them the chance to flee.

"I'm alright," Beth says, lets the magic crawl up her hands to envelop her wrists. "Really."

There's barely a hint of the damage left by the time the magic fades. "That's good," he tells her. "Just be careful. Sometimes mana levels fluctuate for a day or two after. Try to warm yourself up and end up blowing up the entire village. That kind of thing."

She smiles at him, brings her hands back into her own space. "I promise, I won't blow anyone up."

"Do you think we should wake them up?" he asks, peering around her to where Hawke and Carver are slumped over each other, still sound asleep. He's pretty sure there's snoring, though he couldn't rightly say which one it is.

"Can we wait a little bit?" Bethany asks, trying not to feel guilty about it. "They're both going to spend the next couple of days coddling me, and I'd prefer a little peace as long as I can get it."

"We'll be stuck here until they wake up, but if you insist," he shrugs. "And your sister owes me new armour. Don't let me forget that."

"We'll wake them when we get to shore," Beth says, and then frowns. "Did she not bring your other armour? Oh, Mari, why are you like this, you can't just go throwing people's clothing away, that's _rude_!"

"We've already been to shore," he says, scratches the back of his head. "We docked a couple of hours ago, but I asked the Captain to come back this way. We've got a slight issue at the docks."

"Issue?" Beth asks, worry-lines creasing her face. "What's happened?"

"I'm not sure," Alistair explains, a nervous smile twitching at his mouth, "but there seem to be a lot of soldiers there."

"If I have to put those cuffs on again, I might not survive," Bethany says, a little faintly, and doesn't think she's joking at all.

"No, no," he says, hands up and trying to… well, he's not sure. It probably looks like he's surrendering but that's not at all what—hand gestures are just _weird_ sometimes. "I'm not going out there as a Templar. Ideally, your sister will wake up and come up with a plan to get us through the docks unseen. If not, then we tell them we're refugees from the south, I guess? It might come to fighting, though."

It will probably come to fighting. Alistair has spent the entire time since they arrived trying to figure out a way to get them through the docks in a way that _doesn't_ require the Templar-apostate thing. He's had quite enough of that, thank you kindly.

"Let's not tell my sister that fighting is an option," Beth sighs, "because that'll be her answer. As though she doesn't slaughter ninety percent of the people she comes across as it _is_."

"Is she incapable of thinking about the consequences?" he asks, not thinking about it. Then he does. "Sorry, I didn't mean that. Ignore me."

Beth shrugs, laughs a little. "No, you're right—it's just that she does think about it, you know? She knows that sometimes diplomacy is probably the right way to go, but I think, well, she just doesn't care?"

She doesn't tell him about the three years that her sister disappeared when she and Carver were twelve, came back with a jagged smirk on her mouth and a pair of Antivan daggers strapped to her shoulders; she doesn't talk about the way her older sister had stopped moving like a person, and started moving like a killer. It's no wonder that the Warden-Commander picked Mari for this. There's no one else in the world who can kill people the way her sister can.

"So long as she doesn't get us killed before we get _him_ to Highever, it'll be okay," he says, thinking darkly in the back of his head _she's going to get herself or you killed someday_. Humans have an amazing ability to have no respect whatsoever for their own safety, and he's beginning to think a lack of self-preservation runs in the Hawke family.

"Oh, she's not _that_ irresponsible," Bethany laughs, shaking dark curls out of her face. "And besides, Carver and I are here to keep her from _really_ letting go. She won't put us in danger, not after—"

Beth cuts herself off, shrugs a little helplessly. Not after _yesterday_ , is what she was going to say, but Alistair's eyes haven't left her wrists yet, and she thinks it might be a little cruel to keep forcing it on him. He's so visibly uncomfortable in the Templar armour.

The worst part, though, is that it's likely still their best chance of getting out of this without shedding blood. And isn't _that_ just the littlest bit sick.

He shrugs, looks back to shore, still a little unsure. "With any luck, it's just a group waiting to head south for Ostagar."

What he doesn't add is that there's also a chance that news of the King's abscondence from Ostagar has finally reached the north, and the soldiers there are waiting for them with the intention to drag them all back. Or kill them and take the King. He looks up at the sky. Five days? Surely someone (Teryn Loghain) has noticed that the King is no longer in Ostagar. If not that, then how long would it take for news of Highever's troubles to spread amongst the camp?

"Alistair," Beth says, gently, "stop, stop thinking. We're going to be fine."

He shakes his head. "It's nothing. I do think the sooner we get moving, the better."

"And you're probably right," she soothes. "But worrying about it isn't going to make it any better. Besides, do you honestly think anything would be worse than, well, _yesterday_?"

"Yes, actually," he says. "We fail to get to Highever and Ferelden falls. Ostagar is a loss, and Ferelden falls. Either way, this entire trip is rendered pointless and we're all dead."

Bethany laughs, a high bright sound that echoes across the lake. "Your pessimism is endearing," she says, amusement tucked into the corner of her lips. "Now, I'll go wake my family up, and you get His Majesty ready to go, and we'll go deal with whatever waits at the docks, alright?"

She pauses only long enough to touch his shoulder. "We're in this together," she says, passing him by. "So we'll be fine."

"Your optimism is endearing," he responds. He turns and wanders back over to where the King is… not asleep. "How long have you been awake?"

Cailan shrugs. "Will I get yelled at if I say I haven't slept?"

"No, but next time say something," Alistair grumbles, landing a light kick against the King's lower leg. If it hurts, he doesn't care. If it doesn't, well, Alistair's going to wonder if the King is even human. These boots aren't meant for gentle. "It's not polite to eavesdrop."

"You were doing fine on your own," Cailan grins up at him. "She's very pretty."

"Don't care," he says, pulling off his gloves. "We've got a job to do."

"Keep those on," Cailan tells him. "If you're right and we're going to have to fight our way out, you're better off not being recognized."

Alistair scowls, but tugs the gloves back on. "I'm not the one who will be recognized."

"I know you're not, and I'd offer to switch armours if I thought for a minute I'd fit what you're wearing," the King says, dropping his head back to rest against the hull. Maker, he's tired, but he can't sleep—it's always like this, when his head's in a bad place, he doesn't sleep for days and days, completely unable to rest for longer than a few minutes at a time. "I'm more useless in a fight than you'd expect."

"I hope you're a quick learner, then," Alistair tells him, looking over to where Bethany is trying to wake her siblings. Maker, what was Duncan _thinking_ sending someone like Hawke with the King? "We're still a couple of days out from Highever, and then we've got to get you to the castle."

"Easier said than done," Cailan says. He stands up and stretches, all of his vertebrae popping. The Hawke siblings are waking, too, Carver throwing an arm over his eyes with the look of someone who'd much rather be anywhere but where he is, and the eldest sitting bolt upright, eyes already sharp.

"Who else is as excited as I am to go break into a walled city to save our beloved homeland?" Hawke asks the group at large, mouth twitching.

"Mar, shut _up_ ," Carver says, not whines. He does not _whine_.

(Okay, it was maybe a whine.)

She reaches over to scrub a hand across his head, snickering at the way he grimaces. And then her gaze settles on her sister, and the smile drops away.

"Okay?" Hawke asks, very softly.

"Okay," Bethany tells her, reaches down to help her up.

"Do I want to know why we haven't docked yet?" Hawke asks as she rolls into standing, yanks Carver up after her. She looks over the the King and the Warden, both shifting nervously. "What did you two do?"

"Nothing," Alistair says, frowning at the accusation. "We've got company on shore. That's why we haven't docked."

Carver sighs. It is too early for this. "Good company or bad?"

"Company is never good," Hawke murmurs. She moves to the side of the barge, eyes gone cold, and she scans the shoreline. "Soldiers, but we're too far out to see who they belong to."

"Bannorn, probably," Alistair says, shrugs at her expression, lips turned down and eyes hard. "We did dock earlier. The Captain brought us back out when we saw the soldiers. I didn't recognize any of the shields."

"I missed the fun, too bad," Hawke says, more to herself than to anyone else, but her knuckles have gone tight around the railing. She sighs, all theatrics. "Maker, it's too early to go 'round killing people. You think we can avoid it?"

"Probably," Alistair sighs. "If there's a way to do it that doesn't involve me pretending to be a Templar, even better."

"There may not be," she says, already calculating. There's twenty of them—too many to fight in daylight, may the Void take them all—and they're all heavily armed and armoured. "But let's try the less bloody version, first. Your Majesty, pull your hood up. This may get ugly."

"Mar," Carver speaks slowly, standing up to full height, "what are you planning?"

 _Don't let this be like that time in Honneleath_ , he thinks. It's better to not think about _that_ particular incident, of Father's quiet acceptance of having to move yet again, of Mother's sorrowful expression as that quaint house they'd built faded into the distance. His sister has never done anything that would put them in danger. He knows she wouldn't. It's just that sometimes her ideas about keeping them safe are not always the _sanest_ ideas.

"We're going to be very quiet, keep our heads down, and pretend that we _are_ taking Bethany to the Gallows," Hawke says. "And if that doesn't work, you all get the King to Highever, and I'll be a distraction."

Alistair sighs, puts the helmet back on. "I'm not putting her back in the cuffs," he says, nodding towards Bethany. "I hope you've got a plan to explain why she's not restrained."

"I wasn't going to ask you to—" she shrugs, "—because you're going to put _me_ in the cuffs."

" _What_?" whether it's Alistair or Carver who says it is up for debate.

Carver shakes his head. "Mari, that's never going to work."  
"You'd have to take Bethany's stave from her," Alistair tells her. "There's no mage in Thedas who would carry knives like you. The armour's an issue too."

"It's what we should have done in the first place," Hawke says, quite reasonably. "We can switch. Beth and I are about the same size, and I've no magic to drain. I don't like stave fighting, but I can do it if I have to."

"Bethany, can you wear armour and move normally?" Alistair asks. Mages and armour—the Templars were quite fond of the fact that mages typically don't have the strength to support armour. It made tracking them down so much easier, apparently. And Bethany, for all she seems to have led a life based on physical work, is still feather-light and small.

"I don't know…" she says, brow furrowing, mouth pinching down. "But I can probably carry the knives without killing myself?"

For the first time, he's happy for the helmet. It means Hawke can't see the wicked smile. "Then we'll have to sink Hawke's armour. Other than that, it should work."

"Or we can pack it," Hawke says, coolly. Oh, so _that's_ how he wants to play, is it? This is revenge for the Templar armour, she can just _tell_. "Or leave it here. No point in wasting good armour, especially if we want to keep a low profile. But—" she eyes Alistair, "—probably I'll have to rob someone anyway, because I don't think we want to walk into hostile territory with you looking like _that_. Fine, sink it."

"It'd raise too many questions if the soldiers find it on the ferry," he says, shrugging. "And no, we don't. There were rumours about the Revered Mother in Highever. The Templar thing probably won't get us into the city."

"I don't want to know," Hawke says, already stripping the armour off. "Bethy, staff. And see if you can't at least wear the mail, we can belt it, it'll be better than nothing—"

"I hate wearing mail," Beth mutters, but tosses her stave to Carver. He catches it, because he's a wonderful brother, and then Mari dumps what feels like a hundred pounds of mail on her. "How do you wear this all the time? It's _heavy_!"

Hawke doesn't reply, too busy adjusting the mail on Beth's frame. For a moment, Beth catches her sister's gaze, and they look at each other—there are lock picks stitched into Mari's sleeves, and if things go bad, she'll get herself out of the shackles in a second. Because that's all they'll be, on her sister. Just shackles. There'll be no pain, no screaming panic, no _loss_. Just shackles, and if there's one thing Beth knows, it's that her sister is _very_ good at getting out of shackles.

"I look like a _fool_ ," Beth grumbles, but mostly it's put-upon.

"Better you looking like a fool and me wearing the cuffs than the other way around," Hawke says, gentle. She makes quick work of her hand wraps; she ties them around Beth's waist, bright crimson red against dull steel. "Once was more than enough, Bethy, I'm never going to let you wear them again."

"I could, you know," Beth says, softly.

"But you're not going to," Hawke replies, and finishes up the knot. "As it is—no, it doesn't matter, you're not wearing them again. Carver, back me up?"

"She's right, Beth," Carver says, giving Mar an annoyed stare. "You couldn't think of this earlier?"

"Don't remind me," she says, voice tight. If she'd thought of it earlier, Beth could have avoided the whole thing, she wouldn't have panicked, she wouldn't have—

"It wouldn't have worked," Beth interrupts the sudden train of self-loathing. "It—hurt. More than anything I've… ever felt. You wouldn't have been able to fake it, Mar, and then things would have fallen to pieces."

Alistair picks up the cuffs from where they slipped beneath the ferry's bench. "I trust you can put these on yourself?" he asks, tossing them towards Hawke.

"Not had a lot of practise putting them _on_ ," she says, but obligingly slides her wrists into the cuffs. "Not really my thing, you know—"

"Here," he reaches over and clicks the cuffs closed. Not locked, of course, not that she needs to know that. "Try to look miserable. It'll make it more real."

Hawke looks down at the cuffs. There's something… _off_ , about them. They're shaped right, and they clicked right, but there's—there's no _lock_.

"Where's the lock?" she asks.

"You're not a mage," he tells her, "so they don't have one. They use the mage's own magic to lock. Without it, they're just a very ugly bracelet that holds your hands together."

"Templars," she says, nearly awed. This level of incompetence is just… _wow_ , she honestly doesn't want to know about it, it's too mind-boggling to think about. "It's efficient, I suppose. Shall we get this show on the road?"

The Captain has been keeping an eye on them since they all woke up. Alistair would find it creepy, if he didn't know the Captain to be a man that genuinely doesn't care. He points to shore and the ferry begins is slow approach to the docks.

"If we make it to Highever without killing anyone, it's going to be a miracle," Carver mutters. He keeps a close eye on everything, the way the soldiers on shore all turn to watch the ferry approach. There's tension in the air, lingering cold along his spine.

But they dock without incident. Alistair's painful-bright armour gleams like it's powering its own barrier, slowly parting the armoured men on shore. There are no questions, surprisingly, but maybe they're far enough north by now that the Gallows is a logical destination for a Templar with a handcuffed mage. He does his best to look as threatening as possible, for good measure.

It's painfully silent all the same. Water laps at the shore, a _slosh-splash_ against the docks. There are birds, yes, and wind pushes leaves around on trees. There's plenty of sound, just an _unease_ at so many people being in such a small space and not speaking. Once they're on the grass, free from the docks, the soldiers begin filing onto the barge.

"That wasn't so bad," the king says, very quiet. "Grim bunch, they are."

"They're heading south," Alistair says. "Darkspawn."

"They're Bannorn," Hawke says, watching the barge shove off from the dock. The soldiers huddle in the middle of the ferry, granite faced and silent. "Probably they're going to protect the farms."

The shackles fall off her wrists as she swings around, and Hawke holds them up to the light. "Is it wrong that I want to set them on fire?"

"Not at all," Beth murmurs, and she can't take her eyes away.

"Here," Hawke says, and holds them out to Alistair. "Do you want them back, or do you want to come throw them into the lake?"

"Lake," he says, watches at the cuffs gloriously sail through the air to land in the lake. The splash is so satisfying. "Now, about that armour situation…"

"You dump this nonsense in the lake as well," she grins at him, "and I'll go find us something decent. Splintmail, yeah?"

"Splintmail would be glorious," Alistair breaths a sigh of relief once the helmet is off. "You did pack my cloak, didn't you?"

"I'm not _awful_ , you know," she shakes her head at him. "It's in Beth's pack. Give me half an hour, you'll have your armour."

And this is how Alistair ends up wrapped up in his cloak, waiting in the shadows of the lake for Hawke to return. The Templar armour had been _so nice_ to toss away, watching it sink, glittering to its doom at the bottom of the lake. Except now he's wearing nothing but thin linen clothes and his cloak.

Maker, he is _never_ doing this again, not unless she has new armour in her hands at that exact moment.

"Didn't she say it would only take half an hour?" he grumbles.

"She's probably looking for mercenaries," Beth says, smiling, holds out a blanket. "Sorry, you look cold."

"That would be the lack of dignity. It's surprisingly cold without it," Alistair says, taking the blanket. "Thank you."

Carver sighs. His sister is speaking to the Warden, but looking elsewhere, a faint blush building up. His sister is—nope, he's going to take a page out of Mar's book. Not touching it. He's dealt with her flirting with Templars for long enough. He has no desire to find out what _this_ is going to lead to. Probably nothing nice.

"Beth, let's go find something to eat," he says. "Maybe we'll find Marian along the way."

Bethany looks up at her brother, face pulling down into a frown. He's got a look on his face that she doesn't quite know how to name, like there's something bitter on his tongue and he's trying not to spit it out. "No," she says, "we'll just get lost, and then she'll come back and be grumpy for a week."

"If she doesn't come back soon, we may need to think about a search party," he mutters.

"I'm right here," Hawke says from behind them. "You know, you might want to think about keeping an eye on our giant friend. He _is_ the reason I'm wearing uncomfortable armour."

"No, this whole Templar idea is why you're wearing—very good armour," Alistair says, eyes the scratched up armour she's now wearing, a second set balanced precariously in her arms. "Is that red steel?"

"Heavier than I wanted," she says, mouth twisting sourly. She hands him the mail, careful not to drop it. It _is_ nice armour, if you don't sneak around battlements at night for a living, hardly clunky at all. "But they didn't have any leathers for someone my size. Mercenaries, you'd think they'd know better."

"Mercenaries don't generally need leathers," he says, throws off the cloak and quickly works to pull on the armour. It's nice and scratched up, signs of use and battle all over. This is probably the best thing she could have found. Once it's on, he fixes the cloak back over his shoulders. "Now for the fun part. Walking to Highever. Let's get started."

"Or we could go steal the horses the mercenaries had," Hawke says. She's already looking for King Cailan— _where_ has the man gotten to, she wants to get this over with and go _home_ —and oh, there he is, he's sitting on the dock staring into the lake like some kind of large blond Mabari puppy waiting for its family to come home. "It's not like they'll need them, anymore."

"Thank the Maker," Alistair breathes, a smile working its way across his mouth. "You'd be surprised how many mercenaries don't keep horses with them anymore."

"That seems very impractical," Carver frowns. He's not sure he wants to know how his sister found mercenaries. There's a lot of things his sister does that he's just happier not knowing. He nods towards the King, "Who wants to go get him?"

"I'll do it," Alistair sighs. "Go get the horses?"

Beth reaches down to pick up her pack. Carver wanders off with their sister to go get the horses, and she's half a mind to follow them. Alistair's staring miserably down at the dock where the King's plopped himself down. She doesn't really know what to say—there isn't really anything _to_. Of course it's hard between them, hard in a way that it's not hard between her and Mari and Carver, in a way that it could _never_ be hard between her and Mari and Carver.

And so instead, she smiles at his back, and walks off.

There are a lot of ways he can get the King's attention. He knows that. He could try speaking, could try stepping around to make himself visible. There are many polite ways of getting someone's attention. Alistair wasn't raised a heathen, after all. Not that it would likely matter. He's fairly certain the King is aware of where he is at all times.

Still, Alistair lightly nudges the other man's back with his foot. "You coming or should we just leave you here?"

(Alistair has many times been accused of having no tact. Normally he doesn't appreciate it. Sometimes, he indulges it.)

"Yes, I'm sure leaving me here would be very helpful," Cailan says, but it's a distant kind of thing. He's watching the water lap the shore, thinking about what on the Maker's green earth he's going to do about the mess that this country's become.

"As tempting as that is, I have absolutely no desire to be king," Alistair tells him. "Unfortunately for you, that means it's time to get up. Hawke's got horses for us."

"And here I was, worried that we'd have to walk," says Cailan.

Alistair sighs. He agreed to get the King to Highever, not babysit the man. "C'mon," he says, reaches down to wrap a hand around the King's arm. "Let's get going. We might actually be able to make Highever before Teryn Loghain sends people after us if we leave now."

Only, after a moment, it becomes obvious that there's one slight problem.

"Your Majesty, you're going to have stand up. I don't think I can lift you," Alistair says, sends a silent _thank you_ to which ever god is listening that he isn't as big as the King. It seems unnecessarily troublesome.

Cailan actually laughs, at that, shoves up and into standing. "I don't even think the Qunari could lift me."

"Let's not find out," Alistair tries to smile, tries to not think of what the taint turns Qunari into and how that is a creature that could snap the King in half with one hand and not lose any energy. "I haven't really asked, but what is your plan for getting into Highever? We can get you to the gates, but beyond that it's going to be your game."

"I have no idea," Cailan says, rueful. "Do you think walking up to the palace and waving my arms around will work?"

"Given that we have to get through a walled city before we can get to the palace," Alistair muses, "my guess would be no. Walled city first. Then you get to deal with facing the—girl? Do we even know who this is?"

"Elissa Cousland," Cailan says. He runs his hand down his face. "Her brother is at Ostagar, and I'm praying to the Maker that he's not dead. Fergus is… rational, and I'm getting the feeling we could all use a little of that."

Alistair stops, turns, and _stares_. "You're going in to negotiate with a potentially hostile individual and _that's all you know_?"

"...Yes?"

"We're doomed."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence." Cailan mutters. "I don't know what _happened_ , all I've got is a missive from a very angry acting Teryna. I have to go into it blind, I've no other choice."

"Let me get this straight," Alistair says. "This woman is the daughter of one of the most powerful men in your kingdom and you know absolutely nothing about her?"

"Her parents never brought her to Denerim," he shrugs. "Her father is a good man, and her brother as well—I've met both his wife and his son—but to my knowledge, Elissa's not left Highever."

"Is it normal to know so little about someone like that?" Alistair asks, thinking back on the gatherings in Redcliffe, a cycle of noblemen and their families in and out of the castle.

"I don't think so," Cailan says, grimly, thinks of Satinalias where it seemed like half the kingdom congregated in the palace's halls, and the marked absence of the Cousland girl was something to be commented upon. "But unfortunately, there are so many nobles in Denerim, it makes more sense to gather there."

"You never tried to find out what happened?" Alistair says, looking down at the grass that bends beneath their feet. He knows he's heard the name Elissa before, but can't quite remember if she was ever one of the young noblewomen who went horseback riding at Redcliffe. He never paid attention to the people who went through the stables back then. There was no need to.

"Once," Cailan says, but doesn't elaborate.

Alistair just nods. "This is going to be fun, isn't it."

"More than you'd even believe possible," Cailan's mouth twists, and he reaches for the reins to the nearest horse.

—

"Well, it's _big_ ," Alistair breathes, nearly tipping over off his horse while craning his neck to look up the walls of the city, "and very white."

Nine days after leaving Ostagar and here they are. It's an _imposing_ city, Highever is, all stark white and surrounded by golden plains. The city seems to run right up to the cliffs and from there, it's a sharp drop down to the Waking Sea. This is a city built to intimidate, he thinks, a stark contrast to Denerim and it's complicated, lazy sprawl. Denerim is brown and grey, dirty from the bare earth streets to the tops of the highest buildings.

Not that there are many of those. Buildings in Denerim seem to squat, hunching over in the same way many of its citizens do.

Highever, well, he can't exactly see anything of Highever. Just the walls, and the lone, well-guarded gate. It's big and white and with stormclouds gathering overhead, the golden sunlight still scratching its way across the earth, the overall effect is one of cold dread down his spine.

"I'm starting to think we should have come with more men," he says.

"That would look like an attack," Hawke says, raises her chin to survey the city. "And they're already on edge—look at the guards."

She's not wrong; the guards all wear heavy leather armour reinforced with chainmail, a steel chestplate, bright pauldrons shining in the sun. Cailan runs a hand through his hair. Even here he's more than half a head taller than the rest of the traffic moving towards the city gates.

Maker, is there _anywhere_ he doesn't stick out?

"This city is an attack," Alistair mutters. "How are we even going to get through the gate? I doubt we're going to be able to just waltz in without identifying ourselves."

"He's got a point, Mari," Carver says, draws his horse up beside his sister's. "Look at it. This place was built to keep people from sneaking in."

If everything has been for naught—Carver's not going to think about it. It's better that way. Because thinking about the way that gate looks like it was built with the intent of locking people out and making it easy to kill them leads to thinking about the stress of crossing the lake, about leaving Ostagar, about leaving Mother with only Dog to protect her, about how the whole country is going to to crumble out from beneath them because there is _no way they are getting in_.

There something going on at the gates, one of the doors cracking open. Cailan cranes his head, catches sight of a flare of hair turned bright red in the sun, and then the traffic is split by a guard and a little girl. She's looking around, searching for something—

Her face splits wide when her gaze finds his, and she tugs at the guard's hand, points at them.

Soris very nearly groans. Highever was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be devoid of Denerim's people (other than his) and yet, there in unshaven, disheveled glory is the _King_. What did he do to deserve this. Maker, Iona is going to _kill_ him for letting Amethyne drag him out of the city.

"Forgive her," Soris sighs, "but we were expecting you to arrive earlier than this. She's been getting impatient."

"I told you it would take longer n'a week," the girl says, glaring up at him in the way only a righteous child can. "Why don't you and Mama ever _listen_ , I'm _always_ right."

"How many times do we have to tell you not to say things like that around strangers?" he says, gently. "You might scare someone."

"Anyone else confused?" Alistair asks, looking around at the others. They seem just as baffled as he is. That's good. No, wait, that's bad. That's very bad.

Soris smiles weakly. "Sorry about that. If you'll just come this way, I can take you to see Lady Elissa."

"I was still right," the girl grumbles, reaches with both arms in an undeniable demand to be picked up. When she's obliged—Cailan gets the sense she's very rarely not obliged—she looks their party over with the proprietary air of a general inspecting their finest troops. "Mama's gonna be mad, though. They're all dirty, an' you know how Mama feels about dirt."

"I'm sorry," Cailan tells her, honestly. "We didn't expect to be so long. Is Lady Elissa—is she alright?"

Soris frowns. "What do you mean?"

"They don't know anything, Ada," the girl sighs. She's small, and her ears come out points a little too sharp to be entirely human. She pats the guard's face. "Bring them to Mama, and then Mama'll bring them to Lady Elissa, and then things will make sense again."

"If you say so," Soris sighs. He looks up at the King and his somewhat eclectic party. There's a young man who looks startlingly like the King, and two soldiers who are obviously related—both have the same dark hair and a jawline that suggests iron for bones. The last one is a little slip of a thing who looks like she should be in a proper house and instead looks like she's been dragged across half of Ferelden.

Which, come to think of it, she probably has been.

"Are you coming?" he asks, trying to smile.

Cailan glances back over his shoulder. Hawke has crossed her arms, ice-eyed and a _terrible_ little smile across her face—Maker, _that_ can't be good, he doesn't want to have anything to do with whatever she's planning—and her siblings are standing very close to each other. He has very little frame of reference for either of them, Bethany _or_ Carver, but they both look about to bolt. Alistair… well, Alistair is something different, isn't he.

It's not like Cailan has much choice.

And so he nods, hitching up the kind of grin that people who look far more confident than they feel wear. "Lead on, then. I'm sure your mother's going to be very disappointed if she doesn't have the chance to fuss."

—

.

.

.

.

.

 _tbc_.


	3. how dare you speak of grace

**disclaimer** : disclaimed.  
 **dedication** : you're just gonna have to let me have this, okay.  
 **notes** : this story is happy as hell and no one can take that away from me, i will have my otp or _so help me god_ —  
 **notes2** : wren really, really, really, _really_ likes alistair/bethany. like a _lot_.

 **chapter title** : how dare you speak of grace  
 **summary** : Solving the problem of Ferelden, one civil disagreement at a time. — Elissa/Cailan, Alistair/Bethany.

—

.

.

.

.

.

Iona looks over the ragtag group of travellers, mouth curling up in distaste. They don't look much like a King and his companions—they are _dirty_ and _tired_ and they're half-deceased already—and if Iona didn't know her daughter so well, she'd say that Amethyne was playing pretend.

But playing pretend about her magic has never been in her daughter's repertoire; this _is_ the King, and that _is_ his half-brother, and those _are_ a set of siblings more dangerous than anyone else Iona's ever met. And because this is her life now, she's already got rooms for them all, baths drawn, fresh clothing laying out on the beds.

Lady Elissa had wanted barracks for the lot of them.

Iona, on the other hand, has no desire to offend the King.

(Not yet, at least.)

"Hello," she says, pulling a sweet smile up for them. Soris gives her a flat look, Amethyne hanging around his neck; she will deal with the both of them _later_. "Welcome to Castle Cousland, Your Majesty. I am Iona, Lady Elissa's maid, and I am sorry about my daughter. She _does_ know better."

Amethyne has the audacity to stick her nose in the air. Andraste, she has been spending _far_ too much time with Kallian.

"Sorry about that," Soris says, blush hidden by the helmet. "If I'd known she would go beyond the gates, I would have brought her back to you instead."

( _Maid_ is putting it lightly. In the two months or so that Iona has been employed here, Soris is pretty sure that _maid_ never covered her real role. Chamberlain, maybe. Seneschal, even. Somewhere in between, probably. But maid? Maid is the understatement of the Age. That she can say it and not betray the truth is more than slightly terrifying.)

Iona doesn't bother telling him off—Amethyne would do precisely what she pleased, regardless of what anyone said—because her daughter is a terror in miniature, and that's not Soris' fault. He's tried to be the best father he can be, but a girl who can see the future is _always_ going to be five steps ahead.

She returns her attention to the King. He's looking a little stunned; they all are, in fact. Well, she's not surprised. Amethyne probably walked right up to the King and invited him in to see Lady Elissa without even introducing herself, because she has no tact at all. Iona quietly despairs of the girl's future, what on _earth_ is she going to do with her, but outwardly only shakes her head. "If you would come with me, I'm sure you'd like to speak to Lady Elissa."

Cailan has no idea what's going on. Literally none. He glances at Alistair out of the corner of his eye, but that's no help because Alistair looks just as baffled as Cailan himself is. Hawke's not much better; she's staring around skeptically, eyes narrowing rapidly, and it's a little frightening. He chooses to look at her siblings instead (if only because they're both a little less manic than the eldest Hawke is prone to being), but _they're_ no help, either.

Maker, _what_ has he gotten himself into _this_ time?

"I—thank you, Lady Iona," he says, cautiously, has to make a concerted effort not to rub his hands over his face the way he does when he wakes up in the morning to ensure he's not actually dreaming.

The woman—elf woman, actually, she's slight and pale and pointy-eared, definitely an elf; if _this_ the _Mama_ that the little girl had been referencing, before, Cailan suddenly understands the attitude. No one with a parent like this expects to be anything other than right all the time—inclines her head.

"Ser Soris," she says, with barely a flicker of discomfort, "will you please take Amethyne back to her rooms? Or find Dane, he'll keep an eye on her, it doesn't matter which. We'll wait for you in Lady Elissa's drawing room."

"I think Dane is with Lady Elissa," Soris says, adjusts his hold on Amethyne. "Come on, little sparrow, let's get you settled in."

"Why can't I stay?" the little girl asks imperiously. "I'm the only one who'll be able to tell—!"

"Amethyne," comes Iona's voice, sudden and sharp and oddly, a little panicked. "Please."

"Sparrow, hush," Soris smiles, softly, when Amethyne puffs up with fight before shrinking and tucking her face against his neck. "If Dane's with Lady Elissa, he'll keep everyone in line."

There's something going on here that Cailan's missing, but he can't put his finger on what it is. It has to do with how this odd little elf girl had known precisely who they all were, and how now she's grumbling into the soldier's neck about her apparent worth. She can't be older than ten, and given her size, she's probably much younger than that—seven or eight, perhaps. What kind of eight year old worries about their _worth_?

(He remembers, suddenly, that that's the kind of eight year old _he_ had been. Likely, this girl's got reasons that are far different from his own, but. Well. _Still_. The point stands, and it's not his place to wonder.)

Cailan decides not to pry. Instead, he looks at Lady Elissa's maid. "We're ready to see Lady Elissa. I don't want—she shouldn't have to wait on us, any longer."

A strange little smile lights the maid's face, like she'd not expected the pleasantry. "Believe me, Your Majesty," she says, and the smile doesn't slip, "Lady Elissa will be fine no matter _what_ you do. This way, please."

"Anybody else thinking this is a bad idea?" Alistair mutters, looks around at the others. They all have trepidation written across their bodies. Good to know he's not the only one. "And who is this Dane?"

"They didn't ask us to turn over our weapons," Carver says, very quiet. This is all _very weird_. Not magic weird, but still weird enough he'd much rather take Bethany away and let Mar deal with this on her own. "They wouldn't be planning to attack us if we're fully armed."

The maid leads them through a castle that has clearly seen battle recently. There are walls where stones broke, shattered in some traumatic event, sending portions of the castle into ruin. Scorch marks paint the entire place with sickly black designs across the grey stone. In places, the roof has fallen in.

Carver's surprised there aren't bodies still lying about, though he's fairly certain some of the darker scorch marks on the floor are really bloodstains. He's not going to ask. Someone has tried to clean up the damage, and maybe they still are. For what seems to be such a small staff, that's a lot of work.

Still, despite the damage, Castle Cousland is lovely in a way. It's not cold and bitter the way he's heard castles often are. It feels more like a _home_. Little things mostly, the way the castle has lights to keep the shadows at bay, the soft colours still barely visible through the ash showing a hint of the life that once thrived. Doors have been knocked off their hinges, revealing barracks rooms left suddenly. In one, he can see a game of Wicked Grace still spread across the table, tankards of ale untouched.

There's a bitterness on his tongue, thinking of what it would be like if that little cottage in Lothering saw tragedy like this. Losing everyone he loved, everything he's known, the places that should be familiar suddenly ruined and marked by death.

No wonder this Lady Elissa is angry.

 _Maker, what could have_ done _this_? Cailan catches himself thinking. The castle's nearly been _razed_ ; this kind of damage isn't just a night's work, this is _siege_ damage, but there's so little damage to the city and there's no army large enough for a siege that isn't already at Ostagar—

Except Amaranthine's troops.

The colour drains out of Cailan's face. _Oh, Maker, no. Arl Howe and Teryn Cousland were_ friends _, this can't be what I think it is, it_ can't _be_ —

"Who did this?" he asks, when he's finally able to find his voice. The words come out a croak, and he sounds like he's dying, but Maker, dying would be easier than this. "Who—how did—?"

Iona looks at the King in the face. There's such horror in his eyes. He has no idea what's happened, does he? Poor lad, and Lady Elissa so angry…

 _They're going to tear each other apart_ , Iona thinks, and it's so sad she almost laughs. But, no; the night of the invasion is still too fresh, and everything that happened still too raw. Valora's loss still aches. And even that is nothing compared to the grievance Highever has experienced; the Teryn was so well-loved.

"I think I'll leave the explanation to Lady Elissa," Iona says, gentle. "My lady is… well, you'll see. I'm sorry, Your Majesty, but this is something you ought to hear from the source."

Something crunches beneath Alistair's foot. Lifting his boot slowly, he finds a sunburst amulet cracked against the floor. _Chantry_ —of course, Chantry. This is a castle. There would be a chapel here and a Mother assigned to it with maybe a couple of Sisters and the thought makes his stomach churn, a rolling sea climbing up his throat.

"How did they reach the castle?" he asks. "This whole city is built like a fortress. The only way to even get here…" he trails off, already thinking it through. Highever is built like a fortress and the only easy way to get here is the same way they did it: by being _invited_.

Alistair glances over at the King, sees an ashen pallor that makes him looking like the walking dead, an emptiness consuming from the inside already starting to gnaw at his outsides.

 _He's made the same conclusion, hasn't he_ , Alistair realizes.

Iona's gaze lasers in on the man speaking. For a moment, she thinks she's seeing double; but then rationale kicks in, and no, there cannot be _two_ of King Cailan. That is not the way reality works. But the man—boy, she amends, he's barely out of childhood—looks so like the king that it nearly knocks her off her feet. He's not dressed as a prince ought to be, and Iona grew up in Denerim. If there had been a prince of the realm, even a bastard prince, everyone would have known about it.

But the likeness is impossible to ignore: here is the Prince of Ferelden.

"I would love to know, myself," she says, quietly. He certainly doesn't _act_ like a prince, and neither does he _move_ like a prince. Likely he was hidden away somewhere far from Denerim, perhaps at King Maric's insistence, perhaps not. Either way, he likely didn't have a very happy childhood.

For a moment, Iona feels the boy's plight keenly. Her heart goes tight. She can't imagine—the thought of leaving Amethyne is—it's just—

She shakes the sudden need to find her daughter and wrap her arms around her away. Bursting into tears is undignified, especially when they're _completely inexplicable_ tears. Especially, _especially_ when when they're _completely inexplicable_ and also _in front of the King of Ferelden_. No, that won't do at all; Soris will never let her live it down, because even though he loves her, he is also _terrible_.

And so Iona leads them through the wide-open courtyard and into the family wing. It's all going to have to be rebuilt, and her heart clenches again, this time for an entirely different reason. The King's companions have all fallen silent; the destruction has rendered them speechless again.

 _At least the bodies are gone_ , Iona thinks, only a little bit bitter.

There are three doors. Carver is fairly certain the door straight ahead is forbidden, given the way the maid places herself right in front of it like the world's most fragile sentinel, which leaves the other two doors. "Five people, two rooms," he says. "Who goes where?"

The words _family ties_ almost slip past Iona's lips.

Almost.

(And thank the Maker for that; she doesn't think the King's younger brother would appreciate it much, no matter _how_ clearly they are related. There is something deep and dark between them, old resentment maybe, or fear. Or perhaps some combination of both. She can't quite tell, but it is _something_ , and that make it all the worse.)

Of course, she thinks it may end up that way, regardless. The dark-haired boy hovers protectively in front of the girl with the staff in the way of either lovers or siblings, and shares a jaw with the ice-eyed woman. Iona has no doubt that the three of them will not wish to be parted, especially not if it means having to bunk with the King.

"I can share with Mar," Beth says. It's almost the first thing she's said since Lake Calenhad, and certainly the first that that hasn't had a tremble to it. "A bed, we can share the bed, we're both small and we've done it before. And then, Carver, you can take the other bed, and, um—" she pauses to glance between Alistair and the King, mouth pulling into a worried little frown, "—do you mind? Sharing a room, I mean. Do you mind?"

"If it's an actual bed for the night, I don't care," Alistair lies. Well, not entirely. An actual bed? Warm and soft and with a solid roof over it? He'll take that even if it means sharing a room with Teryn Loghain. But, well, the King is different. It's a small room with only the King for company and… the courtyard isn't far, and really, how much time could the King really be spending in the room? There's a civil war to stop, not whatever this is to settle. Civil war. Right.

Beth almost has to giggle at the way his back goes up. He's a terrible liar, but she'll take it anyway. It's been a long trip, and Andraste knows they could all use some rest. And she knows the King won't have any objection—the poor man's got more on his mind than she ever wants to have to think about.

Instead, she tips her head at the maid. "Will that do? My sister and I will share one bed, my brother will take the other, and then His Majesty and Alistair in the other room?"

Iona's _impressed_. The girl defused that situation before it could escalate into something truly horrible, and without even breaking a sweat.

Frankly, it's precisely what Iona herself would have done.

"I think that will do very well, my lady," Iona says, smiling a smile that warms her eyes. "If you'd all like to leave your bags in your rooms, Lady Elissa will be waiting."

"Thank you," Carver says, and follows Mar into the room on the right. He doesn't bother to look if the King and the Warden go to their room.

It's _tiny_.

But, two beds, disturbingly three sets of clothes that all look to be sized properly, and a warm bath drawn. It'll do. He shrugs off the sword on his back, shoulders flexing. "Anybody else creeped out by this?"

Little girls who seem to know too much. Rooms waiting perfectly arranged. Serenely smiling maids. All inside a castle standing on its last legs. There's nothing normal about this.

 _Andraste's tits_ , he thinks, _what have we gotten ourselves into?_

It's a very pretty dress, Hawke muses, blinking down at the neatly-folded clothing on the bed. Yes, a very pretty dress.

On Bethany, maybe.

But it's the dress or this _dreadful_ splintmail she hasn't yet taken off. At least in the dress, she'll be able to move without everyone in a three-mile radius being able to hear every single move she makes. It's no good for carrying weapons, which is a pity, but Hawke has a feeling that that maid sees _everything_ , and if that's not a little bit terrifying, Hawke's not sure what is.

So she picks up the dress, looks at it for one more second, goes _ehh_ , and cheerfully begins to strip off the armour.

"Maria, _really_?" Carver sighs heavily. "You could at least close the door first."

"I could," Hawke says, dropping the armour with a satisfying _clank_ , "but I didn't."

"How are we related," he mutters, takes the two steps required to be within kicking distance of the door. It slams shut. "Let's just change and get this over with. Sleep is calling."

Meanwhile, across the hall, there is _silence_.

Alistair pulls off his gauntlets, runs a hand across his face. Maker, they've all gone a bit hairy, haven't they? He glances over to the King and prays this Lady Elissa will not mind if the group that greets her looks like they've been dragged by their hair across Ferelden.

There are clothes folded neatly on each bed. The fabric is fine beneath his fingers, far nicer than anything he's ever been given before. It's just that he hasn't the faintest idea how it's supposed to work. Nobleman's clothes always seemed too complicated.

"Are you going to change?" he asks, looking over at the still still King.

"I suppose I should," Cailan murmurs. "And a bath probably couldn't hurt, either, but we've not the time. Finery, Maker, who ever thought this up?"

"I'm pretty sure that maid had something to do with this," Alistair picks up the clothes, gingerly turning the fabric around. "This is your area of expertise, isn't it?"

"She reminds me of my chamberlain," Cailan says under his breath. This has all of Chamberlain's signature marks; the bath, the clean sheets, the clean _clothes_. There's even a razor by the mirror, which, from Chamberlain, would be the most passive-aggressive insult there ever was.

From Lady Elissa's maid… it is probably _also_ a passive-aggressive insult, but at least it's not aimed at just Cailan in particular. All three of them are beginning to look a little scruffy, and when Cailan looks in the mirror, he tries very hard to ignore the dark circles beneath his eyes.

He cannot, however, ignore the sight of Alistair valiantly struggling with the hose.

Well, Cailan thinks wryly, Alistair wasn't wrong. It _is_ his area of expertise.

"Buttons," Cailan says, "they're a demon's work."

"What's wrong with simple breeches and a shirt?"

"Nobles," the King shrugs, deftly undoes the buttons. The shirt is maroon brocade, and for a moment Cailan frowns down at it. Why doesn't _he_ get maroon? He gets dark blue, what is this nonsense. "It's a power thing. You'd think the longer it takes you to get dressed, the more likely you are not to show up at all, but…"

Alistair scowls, lets the King help him into the completely illogical shirt. "That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. What happens if you don't have anyone to help you get dressed? Do you just face the public in your smallclothes?"

"Mostly I just flail around and wait for someone to come save me," Cailan says. This is the usual course of action: stare at the clothes Chamberlain's left out, try very hard to get into the pants, be useless at buttons, give up entirely, wait half an hour for Chamberlain to come scold about being late to things he ought not be late to.

"That seems very ineffective," Alistair says, straightening the shirt. He can't help but wonder what happens if there is no one around to save whatever poor nobleman has to do this on his own. That's just _cruel_.

Glancing over at where the King is changing into his own clothes, something strikes him as odd. "Why am I in maroon? I thought that was a royal thing. Maroon and gold, right? The Wardens are the ones who use dark blue."

"I was just thinking that," Cailan says, shakes his head. "But maybe it doesn't matter. We could trade, but then we'd both look like fools."

"Probably," he sighs. These clothes fit him almost perfectly, like they were made for him. Which, given the way things have gone, he wouldn't put it past that maid to have done exactly that. And, well, the King is… _tall_. Much taller and broader across the shoulders; the fabric would likely fall apart before the first button could be fixed. "Is she trying to insult you?"

"She probably knows I like maroon, and Lady Elissa probably wanted to needle me a little," Cailan sort of grins out of the corner of his mouth, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "I don't blame her, though."

"Are you sure you didn't offend her in any way?" Alistair asks. This is all very, very strange. Maker, there are days he is so happy he didn't grow up dealing with politics.

"I exist, so who knows. I just can't see how I'd have offended her without meeting her, but—" the King breaks off, shrugs again. "With my luck, probably."

And here is where Alistair's throat closes up with nerves rattling all through his blood. The King has been _odd_ about some things. Little things, and he thinks back to that first real conversation on the ferry. "Well, is it possible—" he starts, tries to find a delicate way of putting this "do you know if—is there anyway that Lady Elissa maybe—do you know if the Queen has ever been here?"

"She came often, when we were children," Cailan says, quietly, but something's gone tight and sharp in his stomach. Maker, if only he'd gone with her, even if it had only been once, even if it had been after his father's death—if he'd come, maybe this could all have been prevented. "She loved it, here. She and Lady Eleanor are—were—good friends."

"Did she have any contact with Lady Elissa?" he asks, but that's not the right question is it. There's just not a good way to ask the right question.

"Not for a long time," Cailan replies. No, not for a very long time, not since Anora came back from Highever that last time, her trip interrupted by the news of his father's death. Not since they'd been married. Not since Anora had met Fergus Cousland's wife and son, had smiled like a heartbreak and then turned away to hide her face in Cailan's shoulder, the hot wet splash of a single tear on his collarbone the only indication that everything wasn't alright.

 _No_ , Cailan thinks to himself, _not for a very, very long time_.

"Did something happen?" Alistair asks, carefully, quietly. Maker, this is _difficult_. "Something that could have soured relations? There have been rumours for years now about the Mac Tirs and the Couslands, loud enough that even Duncan's aware of them."

"After five years?" Cailan tips his head back, runs his hand through his hair. "No, I don't think so. And besides, 'Nora was always better at, well, all of _this_ , than I ever was. She wouldn't have… put it in jeopardy. She's too smart for that."

And he doesn't talk about the letter in her handwriting that's still tucked into the pocket of his breeches, burning a hole in his thigh. Anora would never be as blatant as this attack on Highever; it's far too obvious, and has no elegance at all.

No elegance, and _casualties_ , to top it off.

Cailan doesn't need to ask her to know that this is not Anora's doing. She would never have planned something that could go so badly.

"But is her father?" and here is the crux of it. "Is her loyalty to him enough that she would have looked the other way?"

Alistair has heard the rumours about Gwaren and Highever, about Bryce Cousland and Loghain Mac Tir. The two Terynirs have caused Duncan to change their plans more than once. Even with the Templars, there was always a careful dance around the two regions and the two families in power. Never show too much loyalty to one, lest you offend the other. That's what Duncan's always said about it.

(It's what Arl Eamon used to say about them too. Like walking on glass, trying to keep the balance of power enough that the King will not have to act on it. All the same, Alistair remembers well enough that if it came down to war, Redcliffe would stand with Highever, blood be damned. He won't say that, though. It's just cruel and Alistair is many things, but cruel is not one of them.)

Cailan looks at the other man sharply. The problem is that Alistair doesn't know Anora—and here, that awful black rage rises again in Cailan's chest, that _this is his brother and he knows so little of her when he should know everything_ —because he hasn't ever had the chance. He doesn't know the way she sits, nor the way she can laugh across a room without ever making a sound. He doesn't know about the long nights they've spent talking, the pair of them missing Cailan's mother so intensely it's a hole inside them both. He doesn't know about growing up with her, bossy and domineering and always _there_ , careful and quiet. He doesn't know the way she held Cailan's hands at the funeral, whispered _I will always protect you, no matter what_. How they'd cut their palms open and spat on it, and how disgusted she'd been because even when they were both too young to know any better, Anora hated getting dirty more than she'd ever hated anything else.

"Alistair," Cailan says, so quietly, "I said no."

There's a protest on the tip of his tongue, but Alistair keeps it to himself. There's an old hurt here, one he knows nothing about. If it does have anything to with current events, then Lady Elissa can drag it up and use it to stab the King. She doesn't have to look at him and see a pained expression so similar to his own that everything dark and ugly threatens to swallow him whole.

"We should get going," he says instead, "before that maid comes looking for you."

—

There is an hour or so before sunset in which the Waking Sea glitters like the finest jewels beneath a gold-soaked sky. It makes everything soft and beautiful. If she keeps her back to the castle, then she can imagine that Oren is about to run out and join her, laughing and rolling around with Dane while Oriana panics about the flower beds being ruined. Fergus will be laughing, Mother and Father strolling along behind him. She'd smile and ruffle the boy's hair, maybe pick him up and swing him around while Mother asks the servants to bring dinner out here.

But the evening remains still around her, only the occasional shuffle of Dane's sleeping form overriding the sound of the wind and waves. The belvedere is heavy with climbing blooms, the scent twinning with the salt of the sea. Only Dane is with her now. Mother is in Storm Coast, Fergus is at Ostagar. Father, Oriana, Oren—all of them nought but dust on the wind.

She'd go down to the docks, only to check to make sure that Howe's severed head is still there, that vengeance has at least partially been sated, but Iona will give her that _look_. Shianni's already been through to warn her that the King has arrived. At least the elf brought fresh tea with her.

"Well, boy," she says to Dane. The Mabari doesn't even flinch, "any ideas on how to tell the Bannorn that we can't afford any soldiers to help them?"

It's all a mess. Everything. The papers surrounding her detail requests from aid that she shouldn't even be dealing with. And, well, that's just the requests for aid. The _other_ pile comes from other places, precious trade deals that she _cannot_ lose. Trade deals that kept Highever safe during the occupations. Trade deals that will rebuild the castle, will keep Highever safe from whatever shit Ferelden decides to throw at them this time.

Only now she's got the bloody King in residence.

Elissa can think of many things she'd rather be doing than talking to a man so inept at the role he was raised to play that he put a _peasant_ in charge. That's what the third pile of letters are, the one in the basket by her feet because of how many of them there are. Really, how anyone thought that Highever would suffer injustice after injustice and _not_ return to being a Free City is beyond her. There's only so much a place can take, especially when they've got an economy to keep themselves strong.

She'd just never thought that the final straw would be the destruction of everything precious.

"At least the city was spared," she murmurs.

The notebook's pages are soft gold in the light. She'll have to ask for a light soon, if she's to stay out here for much longer. Iona gets so upset when she tries to work in the dark. The pen's quill is _scritch-scratch_ against the pages, slowly drawing up a list of demands, requests, and subtle suggestions and from whom the missives came.

The Merchants Guild is in a froth about the recent happenings in Highever, about the supposed Blight in the south and _Andraste in a sea squall who told them about Gwaren?!_

There's Gwaren's letters, which she's fairly certain were originally nothing more than an attempt to anger their Teryn into doing _something_ , but when that failed it's been very serious, occasionally pleading requests for aid. She's done what she can, sending ships so far into the Amaranthine Ocean just to pick up salt shipments from Gwaren's ports. It's just the things that would require Highever soldiers to travel across Ferelden that's the issue.

And, also, the fact that she doesn't have the soldiers to do that. They're all at Ostagar with Fergus and, amusingly, Teryn Loghain.

The Bannorn's still sending requests for soldiers to help protect their farms, and that one hurts to reject. She just doesn't have the men to do it. The dwarves are going to be furious. Kirkwall is going to be furious; grain harvests elsewhere have been poor the last couple of seasons.

Seneschal Bran's more-than-slightly insulting letters in increasingly aggressive passive-aggressive tones regarding the sudden influx of refugees from—Gwaren, of course. That's how the Guild knows. And _Maker_ , even Viscount Dumar is getting in on this. If Kirkwall gets into trouble, then the Guild is going to be a _nightmare_.

Which brings her to the one imperious letter from Orzammar, politely asking about the state of things and is anything going to be happening to their supply of grain and salt? Really, this is about the salt. Of course it is about the salt.

(Someday, she is going to have Loghain Mac Tir and the rest of his family strung up and force-fed salt while the Guild liaison lectures them about how important Gwaren's salt mines are to _everyone_ because this is ridiculous. Salt is worth more than gold. Who leaves salt mines _completely unprotected_?)

Then there's the condolences, many of them politely inquiring about Highever's future and whether or not their existing trade deals are in any danger. Which, _shit_ , includes more than a few offering their sons for marriage, and in a couple of rather brazen letters, suggestions of new brides for Fergus, should he yet live.

And of course, the missives from the city guard and various important people in Highever. So far, only the Revered Mother has dared visit her in person. It's mostly predictable things, condolences and inquiries about what might be done to help. Only a handful have asked after her marriage plans and whether anything will be decided soon.

Which, frankly, is something she would rather deal with _after_ she's handed as much of this as she possibly can off to the King. This is _his_ job, after all. Not hers.

Except, drown it all, there's that pile of letters from other nations regarding the King and that damn Queen so many see as an insult to the throne. Like they think it's her duty to tell a man she's never met that if he doesn't remove that Mac Tir woman from power and soon, that a civil war is going to be the least of his worries, Blight notwithstanding.

Elissa sighs heavily, empties her teacup in one go, and pours another. It's going to be a long, long night.

Iona finds her lady sitting outside in the gardens, dying sunlight in her hair, with an empty cup of tea and a pensive look on her face. She sighs aloud; of course Lady Elissa is out here, still working through all the letters. They've come non-stop, and at this rate, Iona may take to burning them before her lady gets her devious little paws all over them, if only so that she'll go back to _sleeping_ for more than two hours at a time.

"Lady Elissa," she says, "your guests are waiting."

"Do I have to?" she asks, runs a hand through her hair. Iona doesn't so much as glare so much as give her a look that clearly implies violence of the passive-aggressive variety if Elissa does not do as she's told. "Can't you send them out here?"

"I absolutely will not," Iona says, offended at the mere thought. No, she would absolutely _not_ send them out here; it will ruin this place for her lady, and she will have none of it. There are not many places that Lady Elissa hasn't attached truly terrible things to, Iona knows. She's not about to let this last safe space become one of them. "It's not proper."

"Do we have anywhere that isn't still covered in bloodstains and scorch marks?" Elissa grins, no humour in the expression. Iona does not look amused. She puts the pen down and leans away from the table. "Where are they?"

"I've sent them to your drawing room," Iona says, reaches down to pick the teacup up.

"You mean the solarium?" Elissa sighs. Someday, she will break these newcomers of their Denerim speech. "I hope you told them not to touch the plants. The snaptrap has been a little sensitive lately."

Iona doesn't deign to grace that with an answer, merely raises her eyebrows at her Lady. _Honestly_. "Shall I bring you more tea?"

"I thought I was being dragged away," Elissa says, stands and carefully nudges the Mabari awake. "Can you take the letters to my room? No burning them, either. I don't need people turning up unannounced because I'm not responding to their letters."

"You are being dragged away," Iona tells her, shoos her lady and her lady's sleepy Mabari away from the little table where she'd been sitting to gather up all the letters. "I was, however, planning to bring you two cups. Tea will help when you and His Majesty end up yelling at each other. As for the burning—" Iona frowns, petulant. "—you ruin all my fun, Lady Elissa. All I want is that you get some _rest_ , you're running yourself ragged."

"If you want to deal with the dwarves and that bastard Cavin, be my guest," she shrugs, steps away from the elf. "Go ahead and bring the tea, if you must. If it ends up on his head, know I am truly sorry and that he absolutely deserved it."

"I think he may surprise you, my lady," Iona says, voice gone gentle. There is something… _off_ , about the King. She can't quite place it, and the feeling of not knowing precisely what is going on behind someone's face is a foreign one. But it's not a bad _off_ , the kind of _off_ Vaughan had been. It's a sad _off_ , and Iona suspects that Lady Elissa will see it, too.

But she shakes her head, smiling a little. Her lady hasn't really been able to joke at all; that she's coming back, even in increments, is a good sign. "I'll not bring the good china, then. Please try to keep the rugs dry, they are a _nightmare_ to clean."

"Thank you, and please bring one of the lesser teas, if you would. There's no need to waste one of the good ones."

Iona's mouth turns flat, because _really_ , Lady Elissa, when are you going to learn? Free City or not, Highever remains on Ferelden land, and Iona is not about to put her home in more danger than it already is. "My lady, I ignore ridiculous orders, as you well know. Now, shoo. I have work to do, and so do you."

"I'm going, I'm going," Elissa tells her. "Come along, Dane. I'll be needing your help with this."

The Mabari pads along silently beside her, close enough she can reach down and scratch him behind his ear. It's a comfort, for him as much as for her. Elissa adjusts the swords at her hip all the same, the weapons even more of a comfort in the days since Ferelden's treachery.

The solarium is in the portion of the castle that has already been renovated in the same manner the rest of the city has been. Dwarven masonry, Serault glass she spent _years_ trying to get; the whole thing is stronger than anything a man could ever build. It's better than that monstrosity Howe destroyed at the heart—the stones there had been crumbling for Ages.

 _Keep them in here_ , she remembers yelling. _Keep the intruders in the central castle, usher them in. Let them not damage the outer castle and please, please don't let them harm the city_ —

That's a bad thought there. Darkness all, clawing up her throat and choking all the air out of her lungs. Dane brushes up against her leg, enough that the knife tucked into her boot presses against her flesh. She's armed, safe; it would take magic or gaatlok to damage this section of the castle, she reminds herself. That's why it's built this way, why there are plans to rebuild the entire castle this way.

She runs both her hands through her hair, shakes the curls until it's a wild mess about her shoulders, and reaches for the double doors.

 _Bang_.

It's an _entrance_ , that's for sure. The drawing room looks more like a greenhouse, but fine, Hawke will bite. Elissa Cousland looks like the ocean if the ocean wore its sunken treasure on its surface and its danger in its depths instead of the other way around; she's a dark-haired little firecracker with her swords bare at her hip and a pirate's ink-black coat over a night-sky-coloured waistcoat. She's all lace cuffs, gold buttons, wild hair and wilder eyes, something a little unhinged in her gaze.

 _Ah_ , Hawke thinks, suddenly an intense kind of sad, _that's the thousand-yard stare of someone whose entire world has crumbled out from underneath them_.

And Andraste, she only knows it because she's seen that same look on her own face a hundred thousand times: in dingy bathroom mirrors, in the shine of sunlight off water, in the reflection of a window darkly. It's the look you get when you've been hollowed out a hundred times, when people have taken and taken and taken until there's nothing left of _yourself_ except the skeleton-white gleam of your smile in the mirror, your tongue around bloody teeth, the taste of Crow poison in your mouth.

Yes, Hawke knows that feeling a little too well for her own liking. She casts her gaze around the room for want of something else to look at, but her eyes fall on King Cailan, and then she's biting down on a snicker.

Because he's staring at Lady Elissa like he's never seen a woman in his life before. It's a little bit undignified. A _lot_ undignified. His mouth's halfway open, eyes wide, and—

Maker above, is he _flushing_? What kind of King _is_ he?

 _Great_.

(Hawke can't say she saw this coming. Well, not entirely. Maybe a little bit. It's just—King Cailan is such a _puppy_. Probably they'll laugh about this later; right now, it's just upsetting for everyone involved. She has to bite down on her cheek to stop another snicker from escaping.)

Lady Elissa is… well, _scary_. Alistair has known a lot of terrifying women in his time; the Chantry seems to attract them in droves. But none have been quite as wild as this one. She's armed, for one thing, and that Mabari at her heel is very much another weapon at her disposal.

He'd feel a lot better if she didn't have the look of someone who has absolutely no qualms with regicide.

She's beautiful, yes, in the same way a sword is beautiful. Deadly and stunning and he looks over to the King to see—they're all going to die, aren't they? He's close enough to nudge the dumbstruck man.

(Alistair does, however, understand now why the King was given blue instead of maroon. The red reaching up from his collar to the tips of his ears is in no way flattering.)

 _Maker's breath_. What a disaster this is going to be. Alistair bites down on the inside of his cheek, so hard he's surprised there's no blood. At least there's no impatient sigh.

Hawke looks from the King to Lady Elissa and back, waits for one of them to make a move. But there's nothing, no sound at all, and that's terrible, isn't it, there's no salvaging this. Not that she'd want to, she thinks this may be the best, most awkward thing she's ever seen. On another day, she'd pay good money to see this!

But right now, it's probably not a good idea.

And so Hawke draws in a dramatic kind of breath. "Children, ought we leave His Majesty and Lady Elissa to—" she's not actually sure what's going to happen, but she doesn't think it's going to be anything pleasant "— _talk_? I don't think we're needed here."

"Thank the Maker," Carver says, reaches over to grab Alistair's collar, "leaving sounds like a very good idea. Let's go."

They all file out and Elissa does not turn to watch them go. There's a tension growing in her shoulders as the door clicks shut behind the King's company, leaving Dane and her alone with the man himself.

He's tall, she'll give him that, if a bit scruffy. Couldn't he have at least _tried_ to look respectable? But no, he's staring at her slack-jawed like a bloody idiot who couldn't function without someone telling him what to do. She's seen raiders who look more like gentlemen than this man does. Elissa scowls. There are so many things she could rather be doing, like trying to keep the Guild from throwing _too_ big of a fit.

"Well?" she finally says. "Are you going to tell me why you're here?"

Cailan snaps his mouth shut. He's been so—Maker's _breath_ , he is an _idiot_.

He takes a slow breath, tries to will the flush away, very consciously does not run his hand through his hair. He still looks half-wild, and when she's standing looking like—like _that_ —he can barely think as it is, he hasn't slept and she's terrifying and lovely and—

 _Breathe, Cailan_ , he reminds himself.

"To offer my condolences," he says, cautious, "and to offer aid. I'm—I'm sorry, Lady Elissa, for your loss."

One eyebrow arches. "You could have just sent a letter. It's what everyone else has done."

"What anyone else would have done is moot," he tells her, quietly. "I don't—I've been remiss, and I wanted to apologize in person," and his lips quirk up, a little, strange and sad, "and I'm hoping to avoid a war, but that's… that's less important."

"You've never seen fit to come to Highever before," she says, the scowl etching deeper into her features. "And if it's civil war you're concerned about, then I'm not the one you need to be talking to."

"That's why I'm apologizing," Cailan says. Maker, she's tiny, but she fills up the whole room. Her anger is a living thing. "There was never a good time."

"You mean your father was an arse and couldn't stand that my mother hated him," she grins, all teeth and no humour. Men and their stupid pride; never can think of anything beyond themselves. "Don't you have a Blight in the south that you should be dealing with?"

"Yes," he says, simply. "And yes."

"Then why are you here?" she asks, crosses her arms over her chest. If one hand is a bit close to the hilt of her sword, he wisely says nothing about it.

"Because this is more important," and it's a lie, but only a little bit; it's a lie in name only. The Blight is a good excuse as any to die, an honest reason to die, but Cailan can't leave Ferelden without a ruler. Not with Anora gone. Not with everything else that's happened. Not with Highever like this, with this furious-eyed woman its only support. "There's an army in the south. They're probably better off without me, and this—this I could do."

"Your army is going to be short a battalion or two," she tells him. "Rendon Howe is dead. I'd think Amaranthine needs aid more than we do. Highever's survived worse than this."

So he'd been right, then. Cailan exhales. "It has," he says, "but you haven't."

"No, unlike you, I have spent my life building alliances that strengthen this city and her people. They are more than enough to help us recover from this," and Elissa has to breathe deeply, remind herself that violence will garner her a _look_ from Iona. Andraste, Iona's _looks_ could stop a Qunari battalion in its tracks. "Highever has her allies. I fail to see what you could do for her."

Cailan looks at her for a very long time. It's funny, because she's not _wrong_ —there's not much he can offer her. Highever operates on its own, has for a very long time; it's a port city that has little reason to—

"If you've got nothing," she says, "then perhaps you should consider returning to Ostagar. Iona can have your things ready in the morning."

"I would," he says, and he's so tired, all of a sudden, soul-tired, an exhaustion that's settled behind his eyes, "but I can't leave Ferelden without a ruler. I don't even know why I'm here, Maker, I'm an idiot. I'm sorry, Lady Elissa—"

"No one in Thedas is going to argue with that," she says, then it registers what he said. _Without a ruler_ , and that exhaustion in his eyes, in his whole too-tall body. Drown her if she doesn't know _exactly_ what that feels like. That's the world gone watery beneath your feet, swallowing you up until there's nothing but the ink-dark depths filling screaming lungs and there's no sound, only the unending Void.

"Though," she tells him, gentle for the first time, "Thedas is going to be over the moon if that Mac Tir woman is no longer in power. Gwaren too, probably."

"Anora? No, Anora's left—what's happened to Gwaren?"

"They've been abandoned," she says, surprise in her voice because _how does he not know this_? "They started sending us requests for aid after Teryn Loghain left the region unprotected and without a clear leader. We think it was originally just supposed to anger him enough into acting, but when he did nothing, the requests turned serious. We've been trying to figure how to help them without starting a war for _months_."

It sticks in Cailan's throat, leaking acid into his veins. Loghain kept telling them that Gwaren was sorted, that the mines were _fine_ , that the people were _fine_ , that he and Anora didn't have to _worry_ —

Maker, what _else_ has he missed?

"I—I didn't know," Cailan says quietly, closes his eyes and tips his head back to get his heart rate under control. He swallows hard. There's so _much_ , and he can't—he _can't_ —

She sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose. "I've been sending armed ships right by Denerim to pick up salt from Gwaren for a while now, and you really didn't know anything about it? More than one captain has reported resupplying in Denerim."

"You say that like they tell me anything," he murmurs.

"I have both Kirkwall's Merchants Guild and Orzammar breathing down my neck about the security of those salt mines," she tells him. "The miners themselves want protection that I cannot give them because I not only have no soldiers to give them, but can't send them any without starting a war. It's not going to be long before other nations realize that there's a problem. What do you think is going to happen when people realize the richest salt mines in Thedas are completely unguarded?"

Cailan looks at her, because of course he knows. Of course he knows.

"And a Blight on top of it all," Cailan says instead of answering her, nearly bemused with it. There's something weird and hysteric screaming in the far corners of his mind. He's gone and mucked it all up, all of it, what would his father say. "Might as well throw myself on the sword now, make it clean at least."

"Thedas might yet let Ferelden fall to a Blight," she says, tries to be gentle about it. "The Theirin line is the only royal family in the world without any kind of protection and you went and married a woman many consider to be nothing more than a peasant whore. A Blight and a lack of an heir creates the perfect opening for someone to conquer your kingdom."

"Do you think I don't know that?" he asks. "Though I would love to see someone call Anora a peasant whore to her face, I doubt they'd live to see the sunrise—" and he runs his hand through his hair again, trying to keep from shaking, a sharp tick to his mouth, "—though it doesn't matter, now."

"I wouldn't let anyone know if she's the one that did the walking out," she tells him, voice flat. "You've got enough of a reputation problem as it is."

"They'll expect it, honestly," he says, looks away. "I apologize, Lady Elissa. It seems I've made a mistake, coming here."

She should send him away. Should be happy about it. She can finally get back to work even if—even if half the work she's got isn't really hers. And _Iona_. The constant pleas to get more rest, to stop working herself into an early grave.

 _Andraste in a sea squall._

"Wait," she says, sighs heavily. She runs a hand over her face, through her hair. Her fingers catch on a tangle towards the end of the curls. "Half the letters I've been getting are really things meant for you. If you're willing to deal with that shit, you're welcome to stay."

He smiles at her, but it's not a happy smile. "I appreciate the offer, my lady, but your pity is only going to make me feel worse."

"It's not pity, you arse," and the scowl is back. How has this man _survived_ for so long? The Crows should have been all over this years ago. "This is about my maid yelling at me for not sleeping. And if that Mac Tir woman is out of the picture, then you'll need to be a real king from now on. Which is going to be tricky, because you don't have much political sway in the world, so I guess that means we need to work out treaties between Highever and Ferelden. Soon, if at all possible. I don't think you want the Carta moving into Gwaren and killing off the Teryn's family."

"And here I was, thinking you might actually smile," Cailan says, which is both insulting and easier than letting her know that she's entirely right. The Carta in Gwaren is the _last_ thing he wants.

Also, if she kills him, he can stop _thinking_ for a while.

Elissa counts down from ten—nope, that's not going to work.

Was he really trying to _flirt_? Now? When she's armed and… she smiles, a vicious sharp thing, and steps close enough that her fist can slam into his stomach, forcing him to bend enough that one well-placed left hook can _crack_ against the side of his face. He falls down almost gracefully, long limbs sprawled out. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she hopes he didn't hit his head too hard on the floor. She needs him to negotiate with that damn Seneschal, after all.

"Leave him, boy," she says when Dane moves closer, teeth bared. "He can sleep it off here."

—

"You hit him in the face and now he's passed out on the solarium floor," repeats Iona, voice flat. And again, because she can't can't believe what her lady has just told her. "You _hit_ him. In the _face_. And now he's—Lady Elissa, have you taken leave of your _senses_?!"

"I was trying to knock some sense into him," Elissa says, sips her tea. It's the good bergamot blend from Starkhaven; Iona always does know what's best. "I'm fairly certain he was hoping I'd kill him. He might be disappointed I didn't."

"Yes, I'm sure that will help," Iona says. She looks down her nose at Lady Elissa. "You _are_ going to apologize, aren't you? It's not kind, Lady Elissa, you know better than to hit people where anyone will be able to see it."

"Where else was I supposed to hit him?" Elissa leans back against the settee. The fire crackles, comfortable and not raging, roaring, devouring, not like— "I prefer men think with the head on their shoulders, so that's where the sense needs to go, isn't it?"

"You _weren't_ supposed to hit him," Iona says. "That was the point of the tea."

"You didn't bring tea," Elissa says, smiles and takes another sip of the tea that Iona _did_ bring.

"And you didn't think there was a _reason_ for that?" Iona asks. It's a rhetorical question; she knows that Lady Elissa knows she's disappointed, and that her displeasure will manifest itself in tiny inconveniences for the next several months unless Lady Elissa decides to remedy it while she's got the chance. "I do give you more credit than that, my lady, please."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence," Elissa tells her, then sighs heavily at the _look_. Andraste, she does not like those _looks_. And, well, it'd be better to not have to deal with the little cruelties Iona will undoubtedly think up if this is allowed to stand. "Fine, I'll go apologize. After breakfast?"

Iona very nearly smiles. She lets her voice go gentle. "Of course, my lady. After breakfast. Would you like toast, or not?"

"With honey, please," Elissa sighs, sets down the teacup to look at the stack of new letters. She hasn't opened them yet, been too busy sorting through the old. There's the cold lines of the Kirkwall Dragon on one, another from the Guild, and she can see the thick paper common to Orzammar beneath all of it. Andraste, please tell her that fine vellum letter isn't from Orlais. _Please_ don't be from Orlais. The letter on top of it all has the delicate swirling script of a certain Antivan she should probably invite to Highever. Josephine has always been better at this diplomacy thing than her.

Of course, none of this matters, really, not until the King decides to stop being so melancholy and be an actual monarch. The letters with the dark blue griffon crest are the ones that matter most right now. They're hidden in her room, tucked into the shadows of a bookcase. She should probably tell the King about them, about the warriors who will soon arrive in the harbour.

But, well, there's a _lot_ that he probably needs to know, and very little that she knows how to explain.

"What am I supposed to do?" she asks the elf, runs a hand through her hair, a fist forming in the curls. "Even if I apologize, it gets us nowhere."

"It will be a start," Iona says, softly. She tucks pale blonde hair behind her ear, considering. Her lady must have seen it—the way the King flinched away, unused to basic kindness, like he'd never experienced an actual apology his whole life. "And it will make everything that comes afterwards easier."

Lady Elissa looks up at her, and Iona has to smile at the bitter little twist to her lips. She looks so very _young_ ; Iona forgets that she is only twenty, that until half a season ago, her lady had put very little thought to ever ruling Highever. She forgets that they're _all_ young, in the big scheme of things—she forgets that she herself was barely out of childhood when she became a mother in the first place, forgets that Shianni and Kallian aren't even adults, forgets that though Amethyne sometimes says things that no child should know, she is still a _child_.

But the letters from other nations are piling up.

It is going to be such a long, long year.

"I know, my lady," Iona says, gently, drops her hand to Lady Elissa's shoulder. "I know."

"Thank you, Iona."

And this is how Elissa Cousland finds herself in the castle infirmary with a pot of fresh tea and thick slices of toasted cake, whipped honey and the last of the year's strawberries. Whatever reservations she had about apologizing, about starting over with the King, just _vanished_.

(Whatever guilt remained about rushing the renovations on the new kitchen instead of repairing the inner castle also disappear. Having a good kitchen means things like this are possible more often. It's about morale.)

The infirmary is a narrow hall, vaulted ceilings arching up and over the rows of cots really meant for guards injured on the job. Not that there's a healer on staff here, only the herbalist who stops in to check on any patients. Elissa bites down on a slice of cake, honey melting on her tongue, and thinks that's going to have to change quickly if His Majesty is going to be staying any longer.

He's almost too big for the cot. Stretched out all the way with his head not at the very top of the bed, and his feet would hang off the end. It's obscene, much like the shimmer-gold of his hair, spread out in a splash of sunshine across the pillow. It makes the exhaustion in his features all the clearer. Andraste, he looks so _young_ when he's sleeping.

Really though, a man this size shouldn't be light enough that Soris and one of the younger guardsmen can not only pick him up, but carry him all the way to the infirmary. The sleep is also an issue; Elissa can sympathize very hard with it but the sun was still a golden blur on the horizon when she hit him and now it is blazing full strength through the glittering glass up above, sending white light and rainbows everywhere.

The candle beside his bed starts burning through a new ring. What did the herbalist say? Apply the salve every two hours and then proceed to _not_ _be here_ for the next application.

Elissa sighs and reaches for another letter.

Cailan opens his eyes to three things.

One, a headache pounding between his temples, which is unpleasant. Two, something that looks like cake, which is pleasant. Three, a dark-haired woman who isn't looking at him and is so lovely that for a moment, he's stunned into brief speechlessness.

He also has no idea where he is, but that's far less important. The last thing he remembers—

"So you didn't kill me," he croaks. Damn, how long has he been out? "Too bad."

"Sorry for being a disappointment," she says, not bothering to look up from the letter. She takes another bite of her cake. "Sorry for the rest of it, too. If you'd been dealing with half of this," she holds up the letter, gestures to the others, "you'd be a bit testy too."

"Probably deserved it, anyway," Cailan mutters. Sitting up is like dying, and he groans when he tries it, has to relax back into the pillows. "Where am I?"

"Infirmary. Still in Highever Castle," she tells him, washes down the last of her cake with the tea, bitter-sweetness sinking into her bones with a relaxation finer than any alcohol. The way the King looks at the tray of food out of the corner of his eye is almost pathetic in its pleading. "If you can sit up, you can have some."

Cailan tries sitting up again. The world spins in lazy circles for a moment, but then it stops and he feels less like he's going to die and more like he's going to throw up if he doesn't get something in his stomach to settle its churning.

"Ow," he says, almost surprised. The skin around his right eye is tight. "Did you break my nose? It feels like someone blacked my eye."

"Black eye, yes," she says, picks up a strawberry before pushing the tray towards him, "but if your nose is broken, then that's your own doing."

"How is that my doing? You knocked me out," he says, runs a hand over his face. "And—gave me a shave?"

"I didn't hit your nose," she tells him, deadpan. "That mess you were calling a beard was in the way. It had to go."

"How was it in the way? I—" Cailan cuts himself off. He has no idea why he's complaining, he _hates_ having a beard. It makes him look far too much like his father, obscures the little of his mother he has in his face. The only reason he left it in the first place was because he'd been far too preoccupied wondering just what he was going to do about this woman in front of him.

And now he's in a tiny cot in her infirmary, because she had the guts to put him there. It's kind of funny, if waking up with the sun in his eyes to a beautiful girl and a headache the size of his whole body is funny.

Cailan picks up a strawberry, bites into it despite the fact that he _hates_ strawberries, all squinting suspiciously at the cake. "Doesn't matter, I guess. What _is_ that?"

Elissa stops reading the letter, looks at him like he's just asked her if Dane likes vegetables. "Pound cake? Have you never had it before?"

"No?" he says. "Why is it toasted?"

The words _you poor deprived boy_ are on the tip of her tongue. She can almost taste them on her lips, but she's not going to say that. That would give away too much.

"It makes it better," she says instead, leans over to take another piece, honey smearing white-gold across the cake. "The fluffy stuff is honey. Just shut up and eat it."

"I wasn't going to ask," Cailan manages to grin without it hurting too much, and reaches to take the cake from her. It's good, sweet and soft beneath the toasted exterior and the sticky-whip of honey.

He blinks at her. "More, please."

"Can't you reach the tray?" she says, swipes another piece for herself. "I'm not a maid."

"It's polite to ask," Cailan says, voice mild. "I don't want to ruin your breakfast."

"This isn't breakfast," she sighs. "Do you not see that there are two teacups?"

"You hit me in the face," Cailan reminds her, can't help but needle a bit because a little guilt can't hurt. His head _hurts_. "I wasn't going to presume."

"I hit you because you were being an arse at the worst time possible," Elissa points out, fills his teacup and refills hers. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that you shouldn't try being cheeky with an angry woman?"

"I'm always an arse at the worst time possible, you'd be surprised how rarely I get hit for it," he almost laughs, but it's too much, and his head _throbs_. "Alright, ow, the Maker's got me back for that, I apologize."

Elissa huffs, takes a bite of cake. "I'm the one that should be apologizing. At least according to Iona, so I guess I'm sorry I hit you."

It's not a real apology, not like what Iona probably wants, but well, she's _not_ sorry. Elissa scowls, looks back at the letter in her hand. There's a whole new stack of them waiting in her room. Of course there is. But that candle…

"There's a salve on the table next to you. You're due for another application of it," she says, doesn't look at him and does not show any sign of remorse, "to help with the bruising."

"And you going to do it, or am I going to have to accidentally get it in my hair?" Cailan asks. He has to fight not to smile at her, again. She looks so _annoyed_. "I can't see my own face."

"I can get you a mirror if you promise to not get lost in your own reflection," Elissa answers. She should probably help. Iona will be over-steeping her tea for _months_ if she catches wind of this. But, well, he's so _irritating_.

"Can't promise that," Cailan tells her, cheerful, pops another piece of cake and another strawberry into his mouth at the same time. "I'll probably spend an hour just poking at the bruise. I'm a bit sick, like that."

The letter flutters onto the other cot, landing peacefully on top of the others. Elissa stands up. Her back _pops_ , spine straightening for the first time in too long. If Iona is still giving her _looks_ after this, she's quitting and moving to the wilds of Rivain. She finds the jar of salve easily enough, spins the top off and pinches his leg _hard._ "Make some room, will you? This thing wasn't built for giants."

"I'm not a _giant_ ," Cailan says, frowning, but he's already moving, scooting to the edge of the cot so that she'll have room to sit. He doesn't even know _why_ he's doing it—she's _mean_ , and sharp, and he doesn't think about why he just wants to push and push and _push_ until she _explodes_. It's not that she's straight-laced, or too proper, or the kind of person that simply invites teasing. It's something else, an _awareness_ that he can't quite explain even to himself. "You're just very small. Do I even need to move? Will it make any difference?"

"I shouldn't have a problem because I'm small," Elissa says, dips the third finger of her right hand into the salve. It's cool, much better than the heat radiating off him like he has the sun beneath his skin. She doesn't want to touch him, lest she burn herself. "Hold still, will you? You'll be in for a world of pain if this gets in your eye."

"I'm already in a world of pain," Cailan says, but obediently holds still. "Maker, be gentle."

"Think I don't know how to be?" Elissa mutters, slowly works on applying the salve to the blooming darkness around his eye. In another world, she thinks people would have been proud of her for giving the King of Ferelden a black eye. Her mother, at least, though she'd rather her mother not know who is in residence right now. Maybe someday later, when the wounds have healed and Storm Coast isn't a more comfortable home than Highever.

"More like I'm not sure you're _inclined_ to be gentle," he says. The first touch of the salve is a shock of ice to his system, blessed coolness against the throb of blood beneath his skin. He has to fight not to crumple into her hands, because _that_ would be embarrassing. "I haven't given you much reason to be."

She makes a grumpy little sound, and again he goes still. Best not to antagonize her. It's just that it's so easy, and also, she's quite pretty when she's angry. See, there it is again, he's _always_ going to get in trouble, Cailan could just _kick_ himself—

"You'll need this every two hours," she says, voice gone soft. There's a hush in the infirmary she's not inclined to break, isn't entirely sure _why_ she doesn't want to break it. It might just be him. A quiet intensity that follows him everywhere. Is this what it's like for someone made of cracked gold?

Elissa draws away from him, just a little, puts away the rest of the salve. Andraste in a sea squall, _that_ is not normal. But she can see him out the corner of her eye, can feel the warmth still surrounding him and thinks that maybe broken gold isn't too far off as far a descriptions go. He's beautiful, yes; she's heard Theirin men almost always are. There's just a shadow to it, jagged lines throughout him that betray the pressure of being the center of attention for so long.

(See, _this_ is why she doesn't want his job. She's quite happy as she is, without everyone looking at her every time something goes tits up.)

"Thanks," he says, quiet. Her face has gone porcelain-blank, and he almost reaches out to catch her arm to keep her where she is, anchor her down to the cot next to him until she comes back from wherever she's gone inside her head. The sunshine is white, turns her pale and ghost-like, and for a moment, Cailan can't help but think she's going to disappear entirely, lose herself into the ether, slide backwards into the Fade and away from him.

And so he lets a little grin cross his mouth, nudges her a little in the side. "Am I going to have your help for that? Or do I have to let someone else put their hands on my face?"

"If you promise to help me sort through all the letters," she sighs, tries not to second-guess herself on this because there is _no_ way she can deal with all the Letters. Yes. Letters. They deserve to be capitalized there are so damn many of them. "You'll be stuck with me all day, so I'll be the only one around to help. Assuming I haven't decided defenestration is a better idea."

"Who'd be defenestrated?" Cailan asks, lips twitching. What kind of person uses _defenestration_ in a serious sentence? Who does that? " _Can_ you even defenestrate yourself?"

She snorts, completely undignified but _who cares_. "I'd be tossing you out. I love these windows too much to risk anyone else damaging them. Do you have any idea what I had to do to get these?"

"So you'd risk damaging _me_?" he says, voice stricken with the strain of not bursting into laughter. "I don't know how I feel about that, Lady Elissa."

"You're not made of Serault glass," she says, evenly. "If it comes down to it, the windows are more precious."

"I _could_ be made of Serault glass," Cailan tells her. "You don't know I'm not."

"You're too squishy to be made of glass," Elissa responds, pokes him in the arm to prove it. "And you would've shattered when I hit you if you were."

"You might have shattered my brain," he says, considering the way his skull still seems to ring with the feel of her fist against his temple. It's been hours, hours and hours, and he's still a little muzzy. "We just don't know."

Her lips quirk up in the ghost of a smile. "I was taught to fight by former raiders. Not my fault you were trained by weaker men."

The opinion of him that she'd initially formed is slowly, very slowly rewriting itself. Charming, but there's an undercurrent of intelligence hidden behind it all. Andraste, what it would be like to see a bit of life in him, bright and ugly and bursting with energy. _Glorious_ , she thinks.

"And not a word about the fact that I've got Serault glass," she says, hops up to grab the Letters before dumping them unceremoniously on top of him. "You might actually prove useful in this."

"Only might?" Cailan asks, stares down in dismay at the pile of letters. There are so _many_ of them. "Maker, is half of Thedas writing to you? How long has this been going on? This isn't—"

"It's always been like this," she responds, shrugs, picks up the last letter she had been reading. "It got worse once news of what happened hit Kirkwall. Spread like wildfire from there. These are what remain of yesterday's letters. I've got the new ones waiting. There's been more and more of them as the weeks roll by."

Cailan slumps backwards into the pillows with a groan. He doesn't want to ask why they haven't been writing to _him_ —he's got a very good idea of why it is. He brought this on himself, really, he should have known better. " _Maker_. Alright, fine, get back over here, you might as well be comfortable while we do this, and I don't think I have the balance to walk anywhere right now."

She stares at him over the top of the letter, but decides not to argue it. He's offering something to lean against, even if these cots are damn uncomfortable. "Start with this," she says, reaching for the notebook on the table before settling in beside him. The glass pen glitters in the sunlight as it rolls safely off the book and onto the table. "I've been keeping track of everything. First column is who sent the letter and on what date it was received, second is what they want, third is what they're offering."

"Organized," Cailan murmurs, focuses on the scrawl on the page instead of the heat of her beside him. That way lies madness.

As he reads, his eyebrows rise.

She's been managing this all _alone_? Maker's breath, she's got Orzammar on here, Chateau Haine, three cities in Nevarra, two in Antiva, one in the _Anderfels_ —Cailan reaches around her to find some more cake, eyes glued to the notebook. This would have sent Anora into salivation.

"Have to be," she mumbles, eyes glued to yet another dizzying letter with suggestions of suitable young men for her to marry. She's fairly certain about half of them are more interested in each other than in her. Another notebook just for this nonsense would be helpful. She'll have to look into that. "You'll know when you hit the point at which news started to spread."

" _Oh_ ," says Cailan, eyebrows so high they're about to disappear right into his hairline. "I see what you mean."

"I should probably rewrite it to sort by country of origin," she says, leaning over to look at where he is in the notebook. Poor man, not even to the absolute worst of it. "It would at least help you sort out Ferelden's issues from everyone else's."

"Why _is_ everyone else writing to you?" he asks, flips the page. Holy Maker, there are still another ten _pages_ of this nonsense. Her writing spiders through the notebook, inks out a story or merchants and trade and _sorrow_.

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Elissa tosses the letter towards the foot of the bed, reaches for another couple. One of them she skims over quickly before handing to him. Josephine's letters _always_ reference what people are saying about the King and Queen of Ferelden. "Highever has been more powerful than Denerim for the last couple of Ages. We've been trading with most of Thedas for a very long time, and we have enough family connections across the world to give us the kind of influence needed to manage something like this."

He makes a quiet sound, takes the letter from her without really looking at it. There's so _much_ here. But out of the corner of his eye, he catches sight of a name he knows, and then he's scrabbling at her, trying to be a little less obvious, because that was Anora's name, that said _Queen Anora_ —

Cailan reads through it, throat going tight.

 _Oh_.

He's gone still as stone beside her, and Elissa gently tries to take Josephine's letter back. "She's always more polite about it than others, but do you see now why people prefer to talk to me and mine?"

Except, he's not responding. Andraste in a sea squall, she did not sign up for this. Elissa pushes the Letters back and moves to straddle his hips, if only because he's too bloody tall for her to find a better position. She grabs his chin in her hand and when that doesn't respond, she sighs heavily. She so did not sign up for this.

So she does what usually works when people stop paying attention.

She slaps him.

"Was that really necessary?" Cailan mutters, shakes his head a little. Anora—she probably knows… "I don't need _two_ black eyes."

"I gave you Josephine's letter because she's always kind about it," she says, arms crossed imperiously over her chest. "You're going to need a thicker skin about this if you're going to be helping me. It's not going to be long before people notice she's not in Denerim anymore, if she's really left. I can't go through every letter to make sure there's no mention of her just to keep you from being useless."

"Thanks," he says, looking down. _Queen Anora isn't_ — stares up at him. Maker, he can't stand to look at it. "It's fine. I just wasn't expecting it."

Again, she tilts his face up to hers. "You asked me why people weren't writing you. I'm not going to lie to you about something like this. I need you to be a real king, which means you need to know what people have been saying, what they think of your reign. You're not going to fix anything by being dependent on someone most people won't acknowledge. Now, do I need to slap you again or are you going to be an adult?"

"Please don't," he says, very quiet. Something inside of him has turned to ice, and he gently dislodges her from where she's sitting. He needs to _think_ , and he can't do that when she's—when she's sitting where she is, his brain doesn't work like that, and Anora, Maker, _Anora_ —

"Fine then," she says, gathers up the Letters, her notebook, her pen, _everything_ that isn't the tray. "There's a mirror at the other end of the infirmary if you don't want any help. Two hours, don't forget that." She turns and starts to walk towards the door, Iona's wrath be damned. "When you're ready to be a king, you're welcome to come find me."

When she passes the guard at the door, she gives a quiet order to keep the King on castle grounds. It'll do her no good if he wanders out and gets himself killed. Or, worse, hears one of the many, many treasonous things that Highever whispers about Denerim and its ghouls.

—

Things have been _quiet_ since they arrived in Highever and met Lady Elissa. Alistair hasn't asked any questions, just knows that if the King hasn't come back to their room in two nights, that there has to be some reason. Hawke won't talk about it; he's already tried. He gets the impression that Carver Hawke couldn't care less.

And Bethany… the mage has mostly stayed with her siblings. Which has given him a lot of time to wander around the castle. There's the guard from their first day—Soris, an elf from Denerim, of all things—who has been remarkably helpful with directions.

Information is just something else. No one seems to be willing to tell him _anything_ about Lady Elissa, nor about what she and the King might be discussing and where those discussions might be happening.

The sun is bright, in Highever. Sunshine is bright and white, glinting off a city built to shine in its light. It's so different than other places he's been. Amaranthine is always raining. Denerim is always covered in a haze. Redcliffe is _brown_. The rest of Ferelden seems to still be weighed down beneath the gloom of the occupation, despite being thirty years out.

Breakfast is taken in a small courtyard near their rooms. It's been cleaned more than the rest of the ruins, or perhaps was spared the worst of the damage. The maid brings them a spread of food so rich and fresh, yet Alistair has the feeling that this is _simple_. That's fine with him. Simple is good. Simple is calm and quiet and not at all one very angry acting Teryna strolling up to them with a storm brewing behind her eyes.

"Have you seen that idiot?" Lady Elissa stops just short of the table, arms crossed over her chest.

Silence reigns.

Alistair swallows the last of the food still in his mouth. "Do you mean His Majesty?"

"His Idiocy, yes." Lady Elissa's scowl is a frightening thing. Maker, if _that_ is what the King is dealing with, Alistair isn't going to blame him for hiding. "The salve for his eye hasn't been touched since yesterday morning, and I'd rather not have the herbalist yelling at me because her patient is too stupid to get help when he needs it and according to Iona the only thing he's eaten since arriving is a bit of cake at breakfast yesterday."

Beth's knuckles are white around her teacup. The entire table has gone very quiet—Carver's eyes have narrowed, and Mari has turned that kind of still that usually precedes her trying to kill someone—as they've all turned to look at Lady Elissa. The lady is fair _steaming_ , and oh, Beth should have looked in on the King, he was such a mess, but she's been… well, _busy_.

(Keeping Mari and Carver out of trouble is a full-time job, honestly.)

"No, my lady," Beth says, soft, "I haven't seen him, and I don't think anyone else has, either. I didn't hear him come in, last night or the night before."

"He didn't come back," Alistair adds. "Hasn't slept in the room at all since we arrived."

Elissa sighs. She's going to have the headache to end all headaches before lunchtime. _Brilliant_. "Is he always like this?"

"More often than he should be," Hawke says. She stands, one long line of movement, the coiled spring of her muscles a smooth shift beneath her skin. "Shall I go find him, then?"

"No, finish your meal," Elissa frowns. She'd been hoping to leave little Amethyne out of this. "I'm sorry for interrupting. Just thought I'd check here first."

A grin quirks Hawke's lips up. For all that Lady Elissa is a hurricane wrapped in skin, she thinks that the girl will be good for the King. She won't let him get away with _anything_.

(Of course, that's probably treason. _Forgive me, Maker, for I have sinned_ , Hawke thinks, and isn't sorry at all. She doesn't know much, but she knows that Lady Anora and King Cailan are messy, and not in the fun way.)

"If you're sure, my lady," she says, shrugs as carelessly as she can. "If you need anything, we'll likely go down to the water. My sister has never seen the ocean."

"You should be able to find the marketplace easily enough," Elissa says, smiling slightly. "From there, the docks should be easy to find. There's a road that cuts between the docks and the rest of the city; follow that to the right and you'll find a beach. It should be fairly empty this time of year."

Sweet Andraste, a life without the sea. She can't imagine that. Doesn't want to think about it. That's like life without _sunshine_. "I'll leave you to your meal. If you need anything, please don't hesitate to ask."

(There is a beach on the castle grounds. A lovely little cove hidden away, but that space is _hers_ and Elissa is selfish. She's never debated that.)

The Hawke family and their Warden watch as Lady Elissa spins on her heel and heads for the door. There's such _determination_ in her step; Hawke almost feels bad for King Cailan. Of course, he's likely done something to deserve the lady's ire. He seems like the type to put his foot in his mouth every few moments, despite both his very best efforts and some very good intentions.

She looks at their Warden, and thinks it must be a Theirin thing.

Beth's perked up, though, eyes gone wide and shining. "Are we really going down to the water? _Really_? You mean it?"

"Apparently," Carver grumbles. Of course they would. _Of course_. He's still thankful that Mar didn't decide swimming in Lake Calenhad was a good idea.

"Are you sure we should leave the castle?" Alistair asks. "We are technically still responsible for His Majesty—" but he falls silent at Hawke's stare.

"I think Lady Elissa is going to be far more patient with us if we stay out of her way. She's not best pleased with His Majesty," Hawke says, smiling a little. She tips her head to direct Alistair's attention to Beth, who's begun to _hum_ as she swirls raspberry jam into her porridge. "And I think _some_ of us might be _very_ disappointed, if we don't."

"To the beach then," he says, choking a little on a piece of toast. Bethany is positively _glowing_ , happiness and sunlight and since when is his throat this dry. _Do not look_ , he tells himself. She's pretty. Nothing special about that. Just a pretty girl who is very happy. Nothing special _at all_.

Hawke has to turn away and stuff her fist in her mouth to keep from laughing. She shouldn't be so cruel, it's not _nice_. But Andraste's _arse_ , that is _hilarious_. She knew it, she _called_ it! The little Warden has a _crush_. It is _precious_.

Oh, Carver's going to have a _fit_.

… Who cares, Hawke's just going to have to dunk him in the Waking Sea. That'll start a war not easily stopped, not since that time with the cat. Poor Carver, he _still_ hasn't forgiven her for that. It hadn't been a kind thing, tricking him like that, but it was _very_ funny.

"Everyone finished?" she asks, idly, leans her face against her hand. She grins around at them all, the perfect picture of innocence. "Daylight's wasting, children."

"I'm done," Alistair says. He's really not, but he's not about to put it past Hawke to steal the last of his food, just as she does her brother's.

"I was still eating that!"

"And now I'm eating it," Hawke says, chewing on a bite of Carver's toast without remorse. "Funny how that works, isn't it?"

Carver snarls, but doesn't try to take his food back. He's not an idiot. "Fine, we'll go to the beach. Would you just give me my breakfast back?"

Hawke hands it back, smiling like an angel.

—

Armed with directions from a little girl, Elissa stalks through the silent halls, still new and unvarnished. If she weren't so focused on her destination, she might stop and wonder at how the utter destruction in the inner castle is so at odds with the untouched quiet of these sky-high portions of the renovated outer castle.

Like the garden that isn't.

 _That dumb plantless garden on the roof_ , Amethyne had said and Elissa knew _exactly_ where the King had wandered off to. How he found it, she'd like to know. No one's been up here since before the battle, since she brought in Elegant all the way from Kirkwall to consult on what plants would grow best in these conditions, about what would make for a pleasant garden from which to watch the entire city without ever leaving the castle grounds.

This had been one of the designs Mother had added in, really as a way to watch the docks from the castle. Her old bones are getting too weary to make the treck to the cave meadow, she'd said. So this had been added at the last moment.

And now Mother is in Storm Coast with Gracie and one kicked puppy of a king is occupying what should have been her sanctuary.

"I was wondering when you'd come find me."

Elissa blinks away the image of her family gathered further out by the edge, little Oren vanishing mid-laugh. She reaches for the small jar in her pocket, holds it up. "You forgot something."

"Did I?" Cailan asks. He's slumped down on the edge of a parapet, legs hanging over the edge, half windswept, half wild. "What?"

"If you want to keep walking around with a black eye, be my guest," she snaps, pockets the salve and comes very, very close to grabbing him by the collar to drag him away from the edge. "Would you come over here? There's perfectly good benches further out."

Cailan raises his head to blink back at her. She's staring at the way he's sitting and—oh. She must think—

Horror washes over him, and he scrambles backwards. It's not like that, it's _not_ , he just likes the wind against his face, the clean clear bite of salt on the breeze. It's _not_ like that, he's not about to throw himself off the edge, Maker, if he was going to do that, he just would have stayed at Ostagar.

(It's a little like that. He doesn't want to admit it, but it's a little too much like that for comfort.)

Cailan pulls himself into standing. He hasn't actually looked at himself, yet, but the bruise around his eye has probably gone mottled green and yellow. Feels like it, anyway, and he hasn't really been able to leave off prodding at it because he's not much for thinking things through. But she must have brought the salve, else she'd still be elsewhere, and he'd still be on his own.

"I didn't know there were benches," he says, soft. "I'd have sat there, if I'd had known."

"They're a little hard to miss," she says, eyebrows raising. She points out to the almost-garden and the scattering of small stone benches, grey in the shadows of the castle. "If you pick one, I might be willing to help with that eye of yours."

He doesn't say anything, just trudges off to the bench furthest out. That one, of course. The same one she'd seen her nephew jumping over not two minutes ago. She follows along behind and once he's seated, gets the salve ready. The bruise has started to turn a mottled storm green around the edges, purple-black further in.

"What the hell were you thinking, disappearing like that?" Elissa asks, gently dabs the cool salve against his skin.

"Needed to think," Cailan says.

"So you came to an uninhabited portion of the castle?" she frowns. "You need to eat something soon, before Iona hunts you down and force feeds you."

"Nah," he says, tilts his head down so she can reach more easily. "I'm not hungry, and I just… needed to think. I'm sorry I ran off."

"Tell that to Iona." Elissa finishes up applying the salve and puts it away. Looking out over the edge, she can see the white sails billowing like clouds across the impossible blue of the harbour. The new Letters arrived on a ship like them, with one from an old friend and she thinks of what Delilah told her, turns the information over in her mind.

It wouldn't be kind, she doesn't think, but Elissa has never been kind.

"She's at Vigil's Keep," she tells him, very quiet. "Anora, I mean."

Cailan looks at her out of the corner of his eye. The sweep of her neck in a long thing, the lines of her blending down into her shoulders, her spine, the soft swell of her chest. She really is beautiful, but it's a different kind of beauty than any other he's ever seen. There are hard edges to Elissa—her jaw, the sharp line of her nose, the bones in her hands—that aren't _lovely_. She's stunning, vivacious, but it's a vicious thing. There's nothing soft about her, and this is not meant to be a kindness.

He exhales. Just because it's not _meant_ to be a kindness, doesn't mean it isn't one.

"She'll be happy there. I'm glad she's safe," he says. "Thank you for letting me know."

"You'll need to talk to the Chantry soon," she says, doesn't look away from the blur of blue on blue that is the horizon. "The last thing you need is someone catching wind of this before you can ask for annulment. Vigil's Keep is isolated, but it's not that isolated."

"I know," he says, grins a little unhappy. It's been a long process, getting to where they are. And Anora… Anora just deserves better than what will come afterwards. "We should have done it a long time ago. But I guess—scared, maybe, the both of us. No, never mind, _I'm_ scared. I don't think she knows what it means to be afraid."

"You should be afraid," Elissa shifts on the bench, kicks her feet over the far side so she's facing the horizon straight-on, "but not for the reasons you are. Your kingdom has to take precedence over your feelings and what your kingdom needs is a king who isn't thought of as a puppet for a thief-turned-Teryn, married off to a barren woman who should have never even been considered for the position of queen because he was too weak to do right by his kingdom."

Cailan shrugs. "You're probably right."

He can say that, now, after a very long day and night of thinking about it. It had always been there, at the back of his mind—the knowing that he and Anora had made a mistake. But she'd been there to set him back to rights when his whole universe had fallen to pieces, and it had made sense at the time.

He pulls the letter out of his pocket. Not the one she'd showed him yesterday, and not the one that had sent him careening out of Ostagar and running across the country. No, he pulls out the letter Anora had sent him, her hand unmistakable. The paper's creased from folding and unfolding, already too fragile from being read over and over and over. Cailan's gentle with it, maybe too gentle, and very carefully hands it to her.

"Read that," he says. "I'll—go talk to the Revered Mother."

"Theodora is a good woman," Elissa tells him. "It would probably do you some good to talk to her, and not just about this."

The letter almost makes her feel bad for the Mac Tir woman. _Almost_. Despite all her intelligence, Anora Mac Tir knew next to nothing about what was being said outside of Ferelden's borders, and yet she still couldn't take it.

Denerim seems to foster thin skin in its nobles.

What does stand out, though, is the concern for the man beside her. "So she did know some of what was going on. Not surprising. It would have been better if she'd done this sooner, or if, you know, she'd never been queen to begin with."

Cailan very nearly snorts. "She didn't want to be."

"You should have listened to her." Elissa hands the letter back to him, careful with it. It's been creased so many times she thinks it might fall apart from being read over and over again. She'll have to see if it can be taken away from him at some point; it's not healthy for him to keep it on hand and she needs him focused. "Andraste in a sea squall, I never thought I'd say that."

"She's smarter than you and smarter than me," he shrugs. "She's the smartest person I've ever met."

Elissa coughs to cover the snort. "If she were that smart, she wouldn't have tried using political capital she didn't have. That's what started a lot of the talk in other countries and as her husband, it reflected back on you."

"No, you don't understand," Cailan says, quiet. He doesn't know how to explain it, because it's not something she'll understand; she's never been to Denerim, hasn't spent any time in that cesspool of a court. She's never watched Anora manipulate a room. "It wasn't her idea. Neither of us wanted it, but I thought—"

He breaks off, shakes his head. "I should have died at Ostagar. But it wouldn't have fixed anything. So now I'm here, and I don't have a queen, and I don't have a brother, and it's just… I don't know what to do."

Elissa is quiet for a long moment. There are a lot of things she _wants_ to say, but none of them seem quite right. Not for him. Twenty-five years worth of damage and she's got _maybe_ a day to fix it. She remembers the things her parents said about Denerim, about the way it is a cesspit, worse than anything in the back-alleys of Kirkwall. Andraste, the way her Mother would go on and on about Maric and Loghain, the way her father would be silent with a grim frown on his face when some disgruntled Fereldan nobleman came to vent their complaints far from the prying eyes of that darkness.

But, well, this isn't Denerim and he's not going to be in Denerim for a long time as far as she can tell. Between the Blight and everything else, Denerim is probably not the place to be.

"Are you or are you not Cailan Theirin?" she asks instead. "You are the son of Rowan Guerrin, aren't you? The woman who never gave up, who put a backwater country on the path to success, who would stand up for what she believed in, regardless of the opposition. So please, tell me why you're so hell-bent on being like that sorry excuse for a man you unfortunately have to call a father."

"Because he raised me," he says, looks away, "and I'm nothing like her."

"That's a self-fulfilling prophecy if I've ever heard one," Elissa turns a little, reaches to turn his face back to her. "You are not an idiot. He was. So stop acting like you are. Just because you look like him, doesn't mean you have to be him. If Theirin blood bred that true, I'm fairly certain that Warden would be a very different man than he is."

Cailan smiles at her. "If it bred any truer, I'd have stayed at Ostagar. Alistair… I don't know."

"I think you just made my point," Elissa says, does her best to not gloat about it. "You're not all Maric, so find the pieces of her that you do have and be King of Ferelden. You're the man who at my age, managed to get most of the nobles in the world to put money into Ferelden while at the same time embarrassing them all with those _awful_ velvet things."

"They were _so_ terrible," Cailan has to laugh. Maker, he still can't believe it worked, the Mabari kennels needed the revamping so badly, and it doesn't even begin to cover how long Anora had snickered about it. But he falls quiet, because he doesn't know where to start. "Has anyone ever told you you're mad?"

"Many," she smiles, impish to the last. "Usually men and sometimes while trying to remove a jellyfish from their heads."

"Do I even want to know?" he asks.

"Are you a drunken womanizer who never learnt the art of restraint?" she asks, thinks of that stupid boy's _screams_. Really, what had he been expecting, following her down to her beach? "Because if you are, then you might be finding out firsthand."

"Neither, at last count," Cailan says. There's something inside of him collapsing, but Maker, she really is lovely. Lovely and awful, and maybe he's just asking for another black eye, but at least he'll have earned this one. "Will you hit me again if I try to kiss you?"

"I don't know," she murmurs, traces the line of his face down from the healing bruise to his lower lip. "You're pretty, I'll give you that."

Cailan raises an eyebrow at her. "How am I pretty?"

"All gold and soft," Elissa says. "Is it strange to say a man is pretty?"

"No," Cailan says, shifts so that she's very nearly curled up in his lap. He has no idea how he got here. "I just don't generally associate it with myself."

"Strange, despite what most people say, they usually acknowledge that you're like other men in your family," she says, shifts a little to straddle him once more. "I'd always wondered what they meant when they said Theirin men are beautiful. It was usually the only nice thing ever said about the Kings of Ferelden."

"I'll take it as a compliment, then," Cailan says, his mouth against the corner of hers, and they're breathing the same air. "Are you sure you're not going to hit me if I kiss you?"

"If you promise me you'll come back to work, I shan't hit you ever again," she tells him, lips brushing against his skin with every word.

"Somehow, I doubt that," he chuckles, soft and low in the throat. He tilts his head just enough to put their lips in line, and kisses the words there. "I'll come back if you let me kiss you."

Elissa smiles. "Then I guess I have no choice."

—

.

.

.

.

.

 _tbc_.


	4. only innocence and instinct remain

**disclaimer** : disclaimed.  
 **dedication** : to having friends.  
 **notes** : you guys i love them

 **title** : only innocence and instinct remain  
 **summary** : Solving the problem of Ferelden, one civil disagreement at a time. — Elissa/Cailan, Alistair/Bethany.

—

.

.

.

.

.

Beth is so excited she can barely _stand_ it. They're going to the sea, the sea, the _sea_! The smell of salt's hung in the air since long before they entered Highever, and when she's looked out the window, she can see that far-away place on the horizon where the sea and the sky collide, but it's not the _same_. Her whole life, she's never put her feet in the sea. She's never felt the burn of saltwater against her face, in her eyes, curling up her hair, pressing against her lips.

It's such a soul-deep want, Beth doesn't know what it's like to live without it.

Oh, Maker, she's so _excited_!

And it's the perfect day for it, really. The sky stretches out above them, endlessly cloudless and robin's egg blue right above her head. The sun's bright golden-white on her skin, warm enough that she's shed any idea of wearing anything heavy, down to nothing but a breastband, a floaty white shift that hangs off her shoulders and a purple skirt that stops mid-calf. Lady Elissa's maid must have left it in their room with the knowledge of their impending day's activities, and they're _perfect_ , light and breathy and absolutely comfortable to wear.

Beth can't swim, but it doesn't even matter.

She clasps her hands and very nearly twirls her joy. It's going to be such a good day!

Highever's streets are straight cobblestone things. It's the first thing Alistair noticed when they entered, and now as they wander down towards the docks, he's realizing just how much more advanced the city is, compared to the others in Ferelden. Paved streets, solid stone architecture; Maker, how has this place flourished while the rest of Ferelden is still in shambles?

It's easier to focus on that. Highever is a warm, inviting place. The city is stone and secrets.

It is not a happy mage girl dancing down the street.

Bethany spirals, joy in every movement and Alistair swears it's like all the light in the street bends to accommodate her. The world goes fuzzy around the edges until only she is clearly visible.

He must be sick. This can't be healthy.

"Are you coming?" Beth calls over her shoulder. "Alistair, Carver, hurry!"

Carver glares at the world around him. "I'm coming, Beth, stop complaining."

There are some things in life that Carver actually enjoys. Seeing his sisters happy is absolutely one of them. Water, however, is not. Especially bodies of water that Mari is around. Bad things happen when Mar is allowed access to water. Bad things, and almost always bad for him and no one else.

Lady Elissa's directions are good, though. The din and smells of the marketplace are impossible to miss. He's pretty sure every road exiting away from the city proper eventually meanders down to the docks, but the main one funnels people in and out of the market at a pace he's never seen before.

Carver is not a people person. Never has been. There's always been an issue with large crowds and little tiny Bethany getting swept away.

(Or Mar killing someone. That's always a risk.)

"Cheer up, kid," Hawke says, loops her arm around her brother's neck. He worries too much, always terrified that one day someone's going to find Beth and take her away, as if there's any universe that exists where Hawke would allow the Templars to take their younger sister. "She'll be fine. We've all got an eye on her. Nothing's going to happen, but fair warning, I'm going to dunk you."

"I wish you wouldn't," he says, pushes her arm off. "Why are we even here, Mar?"

"Because Beth deserves a break," she says, quietly. Andraste, her brother is such a pain, sometimes, but it's always worth it. His mouth has pulled down, brow furrowed over his eyes—he looks like a grumpy little chipmunk, not that Hawke would ever tell him that on pain of death—and she has to grin about it.

Poor Carver. He tries so hard.

"I mean why are we still in Highever? Wasn't the job only to lead the King here?"

Hawke has to think about this, because, technically, Carver is correct. They were tasked with bringing the King across the country; for all intents and purposes, their contract is complete. But Carver didn't speak to the Warden-Commander, didn't see the way his eyes had lingered on King Cailan's tent, and the way his whole _body_ had gone somber when she had laughed about _an adventure_!

She doesn't know how to explain that for all that they'd officially been contracted as guards, they'd _really_ been contracted to knock some sense into both Theirin men, even though one is a Theirin unacknowledged. What they'd _really_ been contracted for was a lesson about family, and Hawke is still in the middle of teaching in.

But it's not something Carver will accept.

And so Hawke decides to be flippant, because though it might earn her younger brother's ire, it will also stem the flow of grumpiness that seems to have settled behind his voicebox and keeps bleeding all over the place.

She shrugs, pulling up a smirk. "What, do _you_ want to go back and fight darkspawn? Are you that eager to meet the Maker, Carver? There are much more pleasant ways to do it, you know, darkspawn are _such_ a messy death, they'll eat your face."

"Mother's letter said she was going to Kirkwall, didn't it?" he asks, scowling. "That's not that far from here. We could easily get a ship and meet her there before the week is out."

"Oh, yes, let's _absolutely_ take Beth to the city full of Templars, that's a _wonderful_ idea," Hawke says. There's no helping it, she's going to have to dunk him. He gets _so_ grumpy sometimes, he's lucky she decided that Lake Calenhad was too poisoned to risk shoving him in there.

She loops her arm around his neck again, and promptly drags him through the market like she'd drag a reluctant Mabari puppy. Beth's already halfway down to the docks, a flash of white and purple, dark hair curling down her shoulders; the Warden follows close behind her, oddly casual without the armour. Good, he knows to keep an an eye on her, not that Hawke's surprised; the poor boy hasn't stopped looking at Beth all morning. Hasn't stopped, really, since Beth fell off her horse in the first place.

(It is the most painful beginning to a relationship Hawke has ever seen. It is the most painful and also the most _intensely funny_ , and she truly _cannot wait_.)

Hawke marches Carver through the sloping Highever streets all the way down the docks, pulls a right and then a left, just as Lady Elissa told them. Alistair and Beth trail behind her, both wide-eyed at the way she manages to keep Carver's flailing from dislodging her—it's quite a feat, given how large Carver is these days, but Hawke is a determined woman, and he is _still her little brother_.

Hawke turns another corner, and then there it is. The Waking Sea unfurls in front of them, shimmering diamonds in the sun. She keeps her arm around his neck all the way down to the water, and then, without preamble, shoves him right off the dock into the sea.

He comes out dripping and swearing. It is magnificent.

"Do we feel better?" she asks, gamely. "Or do I need to dunk you again?"

"Did you have to do that?" Carver glares up at her, but it's maybe a little weak. For all the wind is chilly when it rolls off the sea and into the alleys of the city, the water itself is sun-warmed and almost pleasant. It's just… _water_. And big, deep water with countless critters and it will be just his luck to get bitten by something.

Alistair stops on the pier and watches as Hawke backs up and then throws herself into the water like a cannonball. The splash is big enough it sloshes over the wooden dock. From beyond the edge, he can hear more splashing and Carver's very _colourful_ swearing.

"Are they always like this?" he asks, looking at where Bethany is beaming out at the sea.

"Mhmm, can you imagine them any other way?" she asks. She's kicked off her shoes, tiny little leather things that wouldn't last a day where she comes from, but make sense if one happens to be wandering a city where the sea is close enough to touch. The sand is warm between her toes, and she draws in a sharp breath that takes like joy.

Beth leaves the shoes behind, and goes to put her feet in the surf. "It's warmer than I expected!"

Alistair makes no move to remove the sturdy boots left for him this morning. They're good boots, the kind that can wander through swamps and surf without suffering. The sand is soft beneath them, his feet sinking just a little bit into the wet shore as he trails after her. "I've heard the north shore of the Waking Sea is always warm. Even in winter."

Beth turns to face him, still beaming. The hem of her skirt is wet already, the waves crashing against her legs. "I wish I could go in, but maybe it's better that I don't."

"It's a big shore," he says, smiling gently. "It's not a straight line of Templars."

Beth laughs. "Oh, no, it's not that! I just can't swim. I never learned."

He blinks. _Oh, she said go in._ That's… it's very bright out. It makes it hard to focus. Yeah, that. "Not a lot of good water to learn in around Lothering, is there?"

"Not really," she shrugs. "And I was always too busy. The summer Carver and Mar learned, I was still—" she breaks off, wiggles her fingers so that they spark, "—training. So I never got the chance. I guess I'll have to be content with walking through the water, for now."

"You could still learn," he says, tilts his head up to look at the sky, the blue barely visible through the sheer power of the sunshine.

"That requires that someone takes the time to teach me," Beth says, quite reasonably. She has to pick her skirts up, lift them away from the water, but then she ruins it by bending down to pluck a shell from beneath the waves and they get soaked all over again.

"And besides, walking is fine. I can find seashells, see?" She holds the shining shell up for his inspection. "I'm going to go down the beach to see if I can't find any more. Do you want to come?"

He glances back at where the other two Hawke siblings are still thrashing about in the water, not a care in the world. "I'll come. Looking for anything in particular?"

Beth _shines_ at him. "Anything colourful! Oh, I didn't bring a basket, I guess I'll just use my skirt if there are too many to carry…"

"Hand that here," he says, holds out a hand and tries very hard to keep the heat rising up his neck under control. "I can carry them."

She blinks at him, tilts her head. "There'll be too many, I think? Don't worry, Carver won't yell at you for it, I'll get the scolding. But, if you're sure, here."

And she very carefully places the little shell in his hands, and turns back into the waves like it's nothing. There'll be salt crusted beneath her nails, oh, she wants to go in so much, but it'll have to be later when no one's around to catch her and remind her of all the dangers the sea poses.

(Frankly, Beth doesn't _care_ about the sea's dangers. There are a lot of dangerous things in the world. She happens to be one of them; the ocean might kill her, but at least it won't be personal.)

Beth looks over her shoulder to where Alistair is still standing, watching her. She smiles. "Am I going to have to drag you the way Mar did to Carver? I'm not afraid to do it, you know, I can hold on very tight when I want to. Or are you going to come on your own?"

He holds out his arm for her. "No deeper than the tops of my boots, okay? Further out and the tide can drag you out regardless of how strong you are. I'd rather not be killed by your siblings, if it's all the same to you."

She's such a tiny little thing, he thinks even the little bit of surf they're in right now could sweep her out to deeper water. Still, she links her arm through his, leaves him between her and the shore. She's almost skipping she's so happy, bare feet sweeping through the waves. It's happy, brilliant sweet, and it banishes all thought of darkspawn from his mind.

"I think I can promise that," Beth smiles up at him. "I don't see how you can keep your boots on, though. Isn't it uncomfortable on the sand?"

"Sand between the toes is worse," he says, grins sunny-bright. "Have you ever tried to clean sand off? You'd have better luck getting Teryn Loghain to don a dress and dance in the middle of Denerim."

Beth giggles into her palm. "I can't even imagine that. He seems far too serious to ever even _think_ about dancing."

"You always have to watch out for the serious ones," Alistair says, quiet and conspiratorial. "The serious ones will always surprise you. I've heard the Teryn has a flair for the dramatics."

"Does that mean I don't have to worry about you?" she teases, pokes him in the side. "Because, if I remember correctly, no one's ever called you serious in your life except for me—oh, hold on, there's something—!"

She lets go of his arm to swoop down, comes back with a perfect white disc between her fingers. Andraste, it's so silly, but she can't stop _smiling_. It's just the sea, not even the open ocean; on the other side is the Free Marches, it's not even that _special_ , but…

"What do you think it is?" she asks, softly.

"Not a clue," he gently takes it from her, turns it over in his fingers. It's cool and smooth to the touch, made of a material he's never felt before. There are slender gaps in it that form a star, or maybe a flower or a sunburst. "Maybe a shield, for tiny underwater warriors? Maybe there are multiple factions among the crabs, and there's this big war we know nothing about."

"Ruler crabs," she says, lips twitching. "I bet they have tiny little crowns. Do you think there are crab Wardens? Or crab darkspawn?"

"Probably Ferelden and Orlais," he says, grin returning. "There are probably Marcher crabs too, and some from Nevarra, but those Orlesian crabs are the meanest of them all. They keep trying to steal everything and they have these obnoxious coral palaces and decorated shells."

"A crab court, with crab jesters and crab healers, all scuttling along and trying to avoid the Orlesian crabs that've come to visit, because all the Orlesian crabs do is get into everyone else's business and—oh, Alistair, a crab _Chantry_!" Beth bursts into giggles, eyes closing with her mirth. "Crab Andraste!"

Well, there goes whatever was left of his composure.

"Oh, it was an amazing story," he laughs, they fall into each other, somehow staying standing amid the tide. "Crabraste led an amazing charge against the invading Tevinter crabs, overthrew them and freed all the little shrimp who were being kept as slaves, forced to clean the crabs' shells and getting no protection from the lampreys that stalk the darkness," and because there is no composure left, he lets go of her arm, slides his around her waist and picks her up, spins her around in a flurry of water and violet, "That's the closest they have to Blights. Lampreys. Nasty things. The Wardens are the crabs who brave the shadows to fight them off."

Beth laughs into his shoulder, dizzy enough that the sky and the earth inverts for a moment and she has to cling to stay upright. "Down below the the coral palaces are the Deep Caves, where the lampreys spend all their time swimming around blind! They have to find the sharks who used to be worshipped by the Tevinter crabs as gods, because once they find one, it leads them up to the crab-lands and they'll take everything back! Long live the lampreys!"

Alistair can't—the surf swallows them up, laughter and all and there's water inside his boots and in his hair and all the world is water and Bethany, and ridiculous grins like they're both little kids and not grown adults. "'Long live the lampreys? What about the Warden-crabs? Or the poor starfish who've lost their Deep Caves?"

"Oh, the Warden-crabs are fine, they end up finding warmer waters. And that's why they've left their shields, they don't need them anymore!" Beth laughs, sopping hair in her eyes. "And the starfish go with them, they go to Kirkwaters and start a _guild_ —"

" _Kirkwaters_?" and there's the laughter again. Maker's breath, his stomach is going to be in so much pain before this is all over. "Are you sure they don't go to Cumbershell? I hear it's much nicer than Kirkwaters."

"Anywhere's better than the Shallows!" Beth has to flop backward, saltwater and sand sinking into her hair. They're both _soaked_ , they're probably going to get sick on the way back to the castle but it doesn't matter. Her cheeks _hurt_ , she hasn't laughed like this in ages. "Cumbershell probably has kinder Tentalars, the mage-crabs are very happy there, I'm sure!"

"Depends," he says, propping up on one elbow to look down at her, "are those cuttlefish or octopi? The cuttlefish are surprisingly vicious, despite the name. You'd think they should be cuddling, not being mean to poor little mage-crabs."

"You would think," Beth smiles at him. Her lips part over her teeth. "But no, the mage-crabs are the tentalars' favourite food! No cuddles, only supper!"

"That's horrible," he says, quiet.

 _Maker's breath, she's lovely_.

And she is. Oh, how she is. Bethany's hair spirals out, mingling in the tide, dark as ink. There's saltwater all over her, drops like stars on her skin, clinging to her lashes around bright eyes. It knocks the thought of crabs and little wars right out of his mind. If someone told him that Bethany was one of the mermaids of lore, washed up on shore to bloom in the warmth of the sunshine, he'd believe it without question.

"You—" he starts, but doesn't get to finish as a shadow falls over him. Looking up, he finds one very annoyed, very wet Carver Hawke staring down at them, arms crossed over his chest and glower firmly in place. "Did Hawke drown?"

"No, but you're about to," Carver snaps. "Beth, get up before the tide comes up any higher."

"No," and she doesn't deign to sit up to glare at him. He's blocking the sun, what is _wrong_ with him? "The tide's not bothering anyone, and neither are we! Stop scowling, Carver, your face is going to stick like that."

Alistair scrambles up to his feet, holds a hand out to help Bethany up. "We were looking for seashells, right?"

"We _are_ looking for seashells," she stresses, shoots her twin a dirty look. She comes up short, however, and tilts her head up to blink at Alistair. "Unless you don't want to? Oh, I'm sure you don't, you probably want to go get dried off—"

"I'd like to dump my boots out, at least," he says, flushes bright red. "We can look for shells further inland, where there's less chance they'll still be occupied?"

Carver sighs, heavily. What did he do to end up with sisters like this? He loves them both dearly, but _really_? It's bad enough that Bethany flirts with Templars. Actually getting close to a Templar-turned-Warden is… _and her shirt_! White linen in water! _What was she thinking?!_

He stomps into the water and bends down, swoops up his sister and promptly balances her on his shoulder. "Come on, we're going to find something to cover you up and then you're going back to the castle to get dry clothes."

"What—Carver, I'm fine, what are you—put me _down_ —!"

It is the most undignified exit Bethany has ever experienced in her entire life. She knows she's not all that big, but does Carver have to ruin _everything_? No one indulges her when she starts making bad jokes, and Alistair did, and it was nice and she laughed and—and if Carver doesn't put her down _right this second_ , she is going to _kick him_. He's somehow managed to carry her halfway back to the docks, wrapped her up so tight she can barely breathe. _Honestly_ , what is he thinking? He's just left Alistair behind!

"Are you going to put me down or not?!" Beth demands. "Carver, are you _listening_ to me?!"

He ignores her until they reach the dock and there he drops her unceremoniously on the boards. "Bethany, look down."

"What are you talking about, look down at _what_ —" Beth starts, and then slowly begins to colour, and it barely takes any time at all for her entire head to feel like it's caught on fire. Her entire shirt's gone transparent. "Oh," she squeaks. " _Oh_."

"Yes, _oh_ ," he grumbles, flops down the pier beside her. "You don't even have a shawl to wear, so try to keep out of the water long enough for your shirt to dry, _please_."

"Can I have yours?" she asks, voice very small. "I don't care that it's wet, I just… I didn't _realize_ , I didn't."

"Yeah," he says, tugs off his own shirt, drops it on her head. "Sorry it's wet. Mari didn't give me a chance to take it off before throwing me in."

"You deserved it," Beth says. The wet _thwack_ of his shirt against hers makes her cringe. She's going to _freeze_. "You've been grouchy all week, and you haven't said why. Do you want to talk about it?"

Carver breathes out, leans back against the warm wood. "I just feel so useless. There's nothing for us to do here. Aren't you bored?"

"I don't really get bored," Beth says, very soft. Of course he's feeling useless, he's not used to having to spend his time _waiting_. But _waiting_ has been Beth's whole life: waiting for Father to teach her more magic, waiting for Carver and Mari to come home, waiting for the Templars to find her and lock her up.

At least Highever has that going for it: no Templars.

"Maybe we should go back," she says, drawing into herself. "Where did Mar go?"

"Not a clue," he says, eyes closing against the sun. "She'll find us when she wants to."

Alistair wanders across the beach slowly, his feet squishing in his boots. Even empty of water, they're still soggy and soft. He picks up shells as he goes, little splashes of colour in amongst the sand. The Hawke twins are safely on the pier, though even from this distance he can see Bethany looks a bit put out.

It's just the _other_ Hawke he can't see. Which worries him. He's got the distinct impression that Marian Hawke is at her most dangerous when she isn't seen. But he makes it to the pier without incident, arms full of seashells. "Bethany, why are you wearing Carver's shirt?"

Beth flushes all the way to the tips of her ears. "I'm, um, wearing white?" she says, voice higher than it ought to have been. "In the water, it went—well, see-through."

He glances down. "So am I, but one layer of linen will dry a lot faster than two."

Beth sighs. He's probably right. She doesn't often have to wear wet clothing, and especially not two layers of it. Besides, it's not like he cared before, why would now be different? Carver's shirt _sticks_ when she moves, and she wrinkles her nose.

"Help?" she asks. "It's… sort of stuck?"

"Come here," he says, gently sets down all the shells and reaches for the fabric of her shirt, hidden beneath Carver's. It takes a bit, but eventually she's free of the second layer of linen. Alistair drops Carver's shirt to the pier, piles the shells on top of it and folds it up like a basket. Not that Bethany's brother is going to be needing it; he's sound asleep in the sunshine. He'll probably burn. The boy is so pale he almost glows.

"Shall we?" he asks, quiet and smiling. He keeps his footsteps quiet as he leads her out towards the edge of the pier where her siblings were playing earlier. The wood is warm, will only get warmer as the sun continues to rise. Alistair sits down at the very edge, tugs his boots off and sets them out to dry.

He—he brought her _shells_.

That's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for her. Beth's touched, and when she settles down next to him on the pier, she smiles _brilliantly_ at him. "Thank you for the seashells. I know you didn't want to get wet."

He shrugs. "It's more that I haven't tried swimming since I was about six and I spend most of my time wearing armour. Have you ever tried wearing rusty armour? You might as well be wearing solid granite."

"I can't _wear_ armour, remember?" she says. "I'm not strong enough for it. So no, I haven't, but wearing granite doesn't seem very comfortable."

"You could probably wear seashell armour," he smiles, holds up a wide shell lined with shiny pearl. It shimmers pink and gold in the sunlight. "It's more that when armour rusts, it's always at the joints. If the joints don't move, you can't move."

"No, that would ruin it," Beth says, takes the shell from his hands. She tilts it back and forth to watch the play of the light along its opalescent interior. "Pretty, but too breakable. And I guess I can understand that, if it rusts you're trapped, aren't you? That doesn't sound very good."

"Being trapped never is," Alistair says, watches the light from the shell reflect across her face. When it hits her eyes, it catches the flecks of gold and amber, flashes of colour against the brown. "No seashell armour? What would you use it for, then?"

"Mmm, I don't know," she murmurs. It's such a strange thing, the rough grey coating and this beautiful hidden treasure inside. Like people, maybe, if people wore their ugliness on the outside instead of the other way around. "Jewelry, maybe? But I think it's nice the way it is. It's more… honest, I think."

"It really is. You'll find a use for it someday."

Beth shrugs a little, and tucks it into her skirt. Her mouth's melted into a funny little smile, something half-sad and strange. "Maybe I'll just leave it out to catch the sunlight, and then every time I look at it I'll remember today."

"You could try asking someone at the castle what all of these are," he says, looks back at the shells and away from the odd expression on her face that makes him want to pick her up and carry her somewhere safe and happy. There's an unusual shell, a spiral spiked thing that tapers down to a point. "Like this thing. What do you think the spikes are for?"

"To keep something from eating it, probably," Beth takes it from him, banishes the melancholy to the back of her mind for perusal later, when she isn't sitting in the warm sun with someone who doesn't hate her just for being born. "Or maybe it's just like that?"

"That's an awfully aggressive way of keeping things from eating it." Alistair reaches blinding among the other shells, before his fingers find something soft and flat. He looks to find the odd shell that started the entire crab war conversation. "It's kind of amazing isn't it? The way the sea has so many different creatures that come in all shapes and size while the things on land are so dull."

"Maybe not dull," she tilts her head, and then she's smiling, because he's holding that silly little white disc, creamy white beneath his fingers. "Just different? There isn't magic in the ocean, or at least, none that we understand. But I think I like our crab-people. They're fun."

"So because they don't have magic, all the wonder has to be expressed in other ways?" he flips the shell along his fingers, so bright against the tan of his skin. "I think I like our crab-people too."

"Crab Andraste," she says, and the giggle's back, because honestly it is _so_ ridiculous. Crab Andraste. Crab worshippers. Crab _Chantry_. She leans against him, laughter filling up her lungs. "We're very silly, you know that?"

"Crabraste," he corrects. Alistair reaches around her for the spiky shell still in her hands, turns it so the widest part is facing them. "There's nothing wrong with being silly. See, it's the sunburst used by the Crab Chantry."

"Even the little crab shields have a version of it," she says, and she's trying so hard not to let the laughter take over again. She reaches out to touch the little white disc, the smooth lines stretching out like rays of sunshine. "See, we must be right, why else would this be here? I do think we have to come up with something better than Crab Chantry, though. Crabantry?"

"Crabantry, yes," he laughs, arm settling around her shoulders. She's so much smaller than him, but fits against him just right. "What do you think they call their Divine?"

Beth beams up at him, shoulders shaking. "The Diving?"

"The Diving, _yes_ ," Alistair almost chokes on the words, the laughter is rolling back. "So does that mean it's the Coral of Magi? What about the holidays? Do they have holidays? Saltinalia?"

Beth has to hide her face in his side, because, oh, _Andraste_ , they are _terrible_. Her mother would be so disappointed, this is not funny at all, why on the Maker's green earth is she still laughing? " _Watersend_."

"All Shell's Day?" Alistair grins into her hair, because she's tucked herself so close he can't turn towards her without brown curls filling his vision. "Swimmerday? What about Fish Day?"

She shakes her head into his side, fingers curling into his shirt, and her voice hitches up and down as she tries to get the words out. "Oh, those are terrible, Alistair, those are so, so terrible! We don't even have to change Bloomingtide, it's already crab-people nonsense."

"So does this mean Haring is Herring?" Alistair asks, barely, because laughter punctuates each word.

"Fishfall!" Beth gulps. "And—and Justroutian!"

"Shoalace!" he snickers. "Haddockmere? I can't figure out what do for Drakonis. I'm afraid to try that one."

"Kingswhale," Beth says, breathless with it. "Drakoinis. Um, Gulperdian?"

"Gulperdian is good, much better than what I was thinking," he looks up at the sky, tries to catch his breath. "Codreach and Watermarch are easy."

"Codreach," she repeats, and again, " _Codreach_ , Alistair, _Codreach_ ," and she's in _stitches_ , her side hurts, she's laughing so hard she can't even make a sound. She clings to him like a—like a _lamprey_ , oh _no_ , the fish puns are infecting her already, she's never going to escape them _now_. "You can't _say_ things like that, I'm going to die laughing."

"No don't do that. We've still got to decide between Anglergust or Anchovygust," he grins, his sides screeching in pain from all the laughing. "Or maybe Augoby? Auguppy?"

"Auguppy," she manages, "Auguppy, Auguppy."

There are many strange things, in the world. Hawke has even seen some of them: darkspawn hordes, pirate wenches, demons who just want to get laid and would rather not have anything to do with possession, Orlesians and their weird fashion senses, Antivans who don't think killing is the answer… yes, strange is the world.

However, none of those things are quite as strange as what she walks in on at the end of the pier.

Bethany and Alistair are _clinging_ to each other. They're both laughing so hard they can't breathe, and they're sitting there at the end of the pier clung so close together that Hawke honestly can't tell where one of them ends and the other begins.

This is not the strangest part.

The strangest part is Carver, sleeping on the dock.

Carver, who doesn't let _anyone_ touch Beth. Carver, who wakes at the slightest disturbance of his Beth-radar. Carver, who's threatened Templars and Chantry sisters alike, who doesn't go three days without brooding about how Beth _never listens_ , who'd rather die to darkspawn than allow anyone to kiss Beth. Carver, who is _sleeping on the dock_.

Oh, come on, he can't just expect her not to take this opportunity, can he?

It doesn't take anything at all to sneak up on them. They're all terrible, how are they all still alive, they wouldn't survive three _days_ in Antiva city. Hawke sneaks dead silent right up behind them, bends down to whisper in Carver's ear.

"Spiders!"

When he doesn't move, Hawke forgoes subtlety, and cheerfully rolls him off the dock.

"Are you trying to kill me?" Carver yells, sitting up to find the tide pushing against his chest. _Andraste's tits, that hurt_ , he thinks, clambers to his feet amid the surf. "You couldn't have just shaken my shoulder like a normal person?"

"I tried _spiders_ first," Hawke says, grinning down at him. "But that didn't work."

"Can you ever be normal?" he snaps, starts trudging his way back towards shore. Or at least to a part of the dock that's short enough he can climb up it. He scrambles up the wooden structure, glares at his sister once he's safely on the pier. "I was almost dry, by the way. So thanks for getting me wet _again_."

"You're burnt to a crisp, Carver," Hawke sighs at him. "You're going to be miserable tomorrow unless we find some salve for it, or unless Beth decides to be kind and heal you before the burn sets in."

"Beth is—" Carver stops as Mar steps aside, revealing where his twin is sitting practically _in the Warden's lap_. Bethany. Sweet little Bethany who flirts but doesn't know how men can be. Bethany who still thinks flowers have personalities and finds stories in the shapes of the clouds. Bethany, who should not be doing _that_. "Maria, you're a shit sister sometimes, you know that right?"

"Only to you, darling," she smiles. She turns around, raises her voice. "Beth, are you ready to go home? Warden?"

Alistair is fairly certain the heat on his face is not a sunburn. He's finding he's much more aware of how close Bethany is when he knows her siblings are looking. He puts all of the shells back on Carver's shirt. "We should probably be heading back, before your brother decides to carry you off again."

"I hurt too much to move," Beth says, and it's not even a little bit of a lie. But she knows he's right, Maker, why do her siblings always ruin _everything_? Apostates don't make friends easily, especially not tall goofy friends who have nice smiles and bring seashells. Those are pretty rare, in her experience.

"I'd offer to carry you back, but I'm pretty sure your brother might kill me," he says, detaches himself from her enough to pull his still-wet boots back on. "Actually, he might kill me anyway."

"He will not," Beth says, scrapes her knees against the dock in standing. She directs the last part of the sentence to a glowering Carver. She's not having this today, Alistair's done nothing _wrong_. "Not if he wants me to heal that burn of his, anyway. No killing, Carver, you promised on the way here."

Carver grumbles. "Can I at least have my shirt back?"

"Oh, yeah, of course," Beth says, and begins to shuffle the shells nestled in his shirt into a makeshift basket made out of her skirt. She hitches it up with one hand, holds out his shirt with the other. "I'll fix the burn when we get back to the palace, alright? I'll have to see if the herbalist doesn't have some salve, as well."

"Beth," Carver sighs, heavy. How is this his life. His sister's leg is starkly contrasted with the dark violet of the skirt. "Keep the shirt and put your skirt down! You're not walking through the city like that. You'll attract too much attention."

"What?" Beth frowns at him. "No, I've already moved them, they're safe where they are, I don't want your shirt. And what do you mean, _like that_? Like _what_ , pray tell?"

He glares at both his sisters and gives up. Mother would have heart failure if she saw this, would pin it on him because Bethany is sweet and pretty and men are _awful_ and it's supposed to be his job to keep her safe. If every man between here and the castle stares at her like she's a piece of meat, then Mar can deal with it.

"Fine," he says, almost snarling. He snatches the shirt away from her, tosses it over his shoulder. "Let's go."

Beth glares at her twin's retreating back. "He gets so _stupid_ about some things," she mutters to Alistair and Mar, or maybe not to either of them. "He's not my _father_."

"I'll talk to him," Hawke murmurs, runs her hand over the top of Beth's head, pecks her on the cheek. "He's not angry at you, Bethy, he's annoyed I pushed him off the dock and he's taking it out on you. Keep your shells safe, alright?"

"Okay," Beth says, lowly, tucks her arms a little more securely around her skirt-basket full of seashells. "Thanks, Mar."

Hawke's lips quirk up, and she raises her head to grin shittily at Alistair. Leaving them alone together is going to be a marvelous pastime. "Don't worry, lovey, it'll be fine. It always is."

"Promise?" Beth asks, and she sounds so small and so young that for a moment, Hawke wants to turn around and go _shake_ Carver.

"Promise," she says. "I'm going to go find your brother. We'll meet up for supper at the castle, alright?"

Beth nods, biting at her lip, and watches as her sister does that strange rogue thing where she disappears from sight entirely. She stands there for a minute, trying to breathe the anger away, fiddling with the hem of her skirt.

"Sorry," she says, at last, loud enough for Alistair to hear. "I hate it when he gets like that."

"He's young," he says, ignores the fact that Carver is only a year or two younger than he is. Alistair takes a deep breath, releases some of the tension in his shoulders with the exhale. He holds out an arm for her, grins wide. "Shall we? If we don't hurry, it might be Justroutian before we get back."

Beth laughs a watery kind of sound, tucks her free hand into the crook of his elbow. "As long as we make it before Auguppy, I think we'll be alright."

—

"All I'm saying is that I want my soldiers back as soon as possible," Elissa holds up a letter, Kirkwall's seal blazing across the top. "The navy needs to go back to being the navy, so the army needs to come back. Two or three battalions can stay behind to help search for Fergus, but I can't keep my sailors grounded any longer if this Qunari situation gets any worse."

"We're stretched too thin as it is," Cailan sighs wearily. It seems like they've been at this for _hours_. "If we don't stop the Blight, there'll be worse things to worry about than the Qunari."

"The Wardens are on their way," she says, almost glib. She turns her back towards him, reading over Saemus's letter. Maker, _Saemus_ is writing to her now. "The group from the Anderfels is going to Rivain. The Orlesian detachment is only about a week out, and the Nevarran Wardens are about another week and a half away from that."

"I'm sorry," Cailan says, staring at her. "Did you say _Wardens_?"

She turns around to blink at him. "Yes, I did. The crowns of the various nations have promised their armies too if it's needed, though Celene and I have agreed that only the Wardens from Orlais should come. She'll only send aid if we need help holding the Waking Sea and protecting the Free Marches, though she'll probably just reinforce the border. But no Orlesians on Fereldan soil. The agreement was very clear about that, and Celene still owes me for fixing things with the Guild so she'll keep her word."

"And you didn't think I needed to know this before?" he pinches the bridge of his nose. "Maker, Orlesian Wardens, even if they're not Orlesian… they'd be better off sailing 'round the coast, it'd be faster than trekking through the countryside…"

"You didn't give me much of a chance to tell you," she says, doesn't point out that her deal with the Wardens was specifically that no Warden born or raised in Orlais could come. She suspects, based on the reply she got, that that means dwarves, dwarves, and still more dwarves. "And no, this time of year the passage around Amaranthine is too violent. Orlesian ships can't handle waters that rough. They'd break before they could reach Denerim. Plus, Qunari. Even flying Warden colours, they'd sink before they ever reached Ostagar."

"I know," he says, shoulders slumping.

"Not only that," Elissa picks up a new letter, "but you're assuming Ostagar is going to be a win."

"No," he shakes his head, and all of a sudden he's tired, so tired. "Ostagar was never going to be a victory. There weren't enough soldiers, we didn't have half as many Wardens as we needed—the Warden-Commander, he kept trying to… well. No. It was never going to be victory."

"Exactly, and now Ferelden's military and its Wardens are going to be _devastated_ and the horde is going to continue marching north," Elissa frowns, looks down at him over the edge of Prince Bhelen's letter. "You need all the Wardens you can get. If the Bannorn is tainted, Ferelden might as well burn. Hopefully, they'll push towards Redcliffe instead of Gwaren. That's a much better position for a full-scale assault on them."

"Would it be better to send them along the Kingsroad to Denerim, have them take a ship from there?" Cailan murmurs, gaze flicking to the map they've spread out on the table. It's five days from Highever to Denerim, and that's moving slower than a battalion does. "It'd be faster than sending them down the Imperial Highway, that's three weeks travel unless they cross the Calenhad."

She shakes her head, tosses Bhelen's letter away.

(King Endrin is dead and the throne is contested because Bhelen is a power-hungry _idiot_. That's all she needs to know. The Guild's going to be _horrible_ for the foreseeable future as it is. This just makes it worse.)

"No, the Wardens from Rivain are going down the coast," she says, steps over to the map and traces the route lightly with her fingers. "They'll resupply in Denerim and then drop down to Gwaren to try and flank the horde. That's one of the largest forces that will be coming, since it will be both the Rivaini and Anders detachments at the same time, and Weisshaupt has promised more Wardens than anywhere else. It'll be better to send those that are coming here across Lake Calenhad straight to Redcliffe."

"Wardens and Templars," Cailan shakes his head. " _That'll_ be a good conversation. Alright, so we'll have Wardens coming in from—everywhere. What else?"

"Not everywhere," Elissa says, shrugs a little. "Antiva is holding off on sending any of theirs. And really, you're worried about the Templars? If there's any problems, just talk to Knight-Commander Greagoir. He's a reasonable man and doesn't like it when the Templars stationed along the Calenhad go beyond their orders."

"I know he is, I've met the man," he tilts his head back, looks for the words to explain what it was like to watch Beth crumple in pain as the magic inside her was sucked out through her wrists. "But many Templars consider the Wardens an apostate escape, and I don't fancy a war because one of them takes offense to the other."

"Wardens don't give a shit and their treaty with the Chantry states they can use lethal force against the Templars if one of their mages is threatened or harmed by one," she says, voice even. "It is a haven for apostates, but there's a Blight on. I doubt the Templars are going to care much about who saves them when they're faced with the darkspawn horde marching on the Tower."

"You've not met many Templars, have you," Cailan says, has to smile a little. It's a bitter little thing. "Let's just hope we're lucky and no one decides to blow each other up."

She looks at him and it's a dark, dark thing, lips turned down and eyes shaded by memories she'd rather not have. If there's to be a war with the Templars, it will be between the mages and the Templars and it will start in that Maker-cursed prison Kirkwall calls a Circle. "Have you forgotten what sits between here and Kirkwall? You should be thankful that Ferelden seems to attract reasonable Templars."

"Have you been inside the Gallows?" he asks. "If there ever was a prison…"

"More times than I care to admit," she explains, but says nothing more about it. "Lake Calenhad is the best route and you know it. With any luck, the Archdemon will show itself once the Wardens arrive and the Blight can be stopped before it reaches the Bannorn. Or least limit the damage, somewhat. Orzammar is already a bloody mess. If they lose their primary food supply, it could very likely destroy the entire dwarven kingdom and then where would we be?"

"Without half-decent weapons," Cailan mutters, smooths the map out again. "And forget about lyrium, the Chantry might as well just declare an Exalted March and be done with it. C'mere, help me lay this out, I can't get it to stick."

"There are other sources of lyrium. Most of their stock comes from the Carta, not Orzammar, despite what they say." She helps him with the map, setting books down on the corners to hold it in place. "By the way, how are you at writing condolences?"

"Better than anyone my age should be," Cailan says, quietly, darkly. "Why?"

"King Endrin is dead."

" _Maker_ ," he murmurs. "I take it I'm writing yours, too?"

"Drown me, _no_ ," she huffs. "You just need to start working on repairing your reputation. I'm the one who has to balance the Guild now that the throne is contested and Orzammar is facing civil war."

That kickstarts something in his memory, something Duncan had said, one of his recruits a disgraced dwarven _princess_ left to die in the Deep Roads. If the girl is who he thinks she is—Maker, it doesn't even matter. She may be dead already, for all he knows.

"The Guild will be fine," he says, quietly reassuring. "Fussy dwarves are no match for you."

"Thank you, though I doubt I need that," she says, staring down at the little dot for _Orzammar_ on the map. "If the Assembly is stupid enough to back Harrowmont, the Guild will just send Carta assassins until only Bhelen remains. He's a murderous piece of nug shit, but without his sister, he's the only one who won't damage their business and will do what they tell him to. Dwarven politics are always too complicated."

"Bloody, too," Cailan murmurs. "Then again, most politics are bloody, one way or another."

Her laugh is a soft, dark thing. "That they are. Speaking of politics, you'll also need to write to Viscount Dumar, if only to address the refugee situation. An actual visit would be better, but that can wait until after the Blight is dealt with. He'll understand. His Seneschal might not, but Bran's a rat bastard who shouldn't be involved with politics anyway."

"Sounds like you like him," Cailan says, mouth curving up. She's hovering at his side, and it takes nothing at all to tug her down into his lap. He's so _tired_ , Maker, how does she have this kind of energy, he's exhausted just looking at her. "Stop moving, you're making it hard to rest."

"Bran Cavin?" Elissa says, twisting around until she's comfortable in his lap, her feet propped up on the table. "Absolutely not. He's horrible. Does his job well enough, but he usually offends everyone within listening distance. Of course, he is easier to handle since the last time we saw each other at Chateau Haine. Blackmail can be a glorious thing."

"I was kidding, Elissa," Cailan snickers into her shoulder. "You don't call a man a rat bastard if you like him, that's vicious."

"I suspect his lover calls him worse in bed," she mutters, tilts back to look up at the ceiling. "Let's see, what else is there that you need to know…"

Cailan hooks his chin over her shoulder. The pile of letters has certainly shrunk, but it happened so gradually he didn't even notice. Their candles have burned through four hour-marks, pools of melted wax hardening on the table. At least the swelling around his eye has gone down—Elissa's been militant about applying that salve every two hours on the dot, she's worse about punctuality than anyone else Cailan's ever met—but it's been a slow kind of day, and he can't actually remember the last time he ate anything. Idly, he brushes his thumb down her side, over her hip.

"Don't you ever get tired?" he asks, very softly.

"Sometimes," she says, reaches for another letter. "I just can't right now. Too much to do."

"I don't think I can be tired enough for the both of us," he says into her shoulder blade. "We should eat something, at least."

"Give it about five minutes," she murmurs, eyes flickering over the tightly scrawled words. "Iona should be by soon."

"Is she always like that?"

"Yes," Elissa smiles, hearing the library door click. Four minutes early. So close. Someday, she will learn when to expect Iona. "Time for dinner already?"

Iona carries a tray; fresh-baked olive bread and a tureen of hearty seafood bisque, bowls and spoons and a pitcher of water. There's a red-haired elf behind her carrying another tray, crab legs with little pats of yellow-gold butter, some kind of thickened rice that smells of roasted mushrooms, and—something else that Cailan has never seen in his life. It might be salad. It also might not be salad.

"Really, my lady," Iona sighs, "I wish you would come down and eat in the hall. You don't get enough sun."

"You forbid me from working in the gardens while we have guests, remember?" she grins, knows that's not at all what Iona told her. She does take her feet down from the table, though. Iona's glare is more than enough to tell her that _that_ will not be tolerated. "Thank you for bringing it. You too, Shianni."

Shianni dips into the curtsey that she knows Iona is far too displeased to attend to. It's mostly for the King's benefit; Lady Elissa doesn't stand on formality, but if there's one thing that Shianni knows, it's that people—humans, especially—only notice something when it's out of place. The King does seem to be rather busy, given that Lady Elissa's sitting in his lap, but Shianni isn't going to presume.

Iona takes a slow breath. She can't leave them alone, clearly. King Cailan is wrapped around Lady Elissa like it's nothing, and perhaps it's not, but he is still married, and this is still improper.

She's going to have to give them both a talking to. No one will enjoy it.

 _There is a bedroom right down the hall_ , she telegraphs to Lady Elissa with her eyebrows, _and it will remain unused_.

"Don't give me that look," Elissa teases, knows full well what Iona's issue with this scene is. "I promise I'll take the dishes back to the kitchen myself. The empty library won't be left a mess."

"I suppose I can't ask for more than that," Iona says. She stares at her lady for a moment longer. "If you need anything, my lady, please do not hesitate to call."

"I suspect you'll know before I do if I need anything," Elissa says, reaching for a water goblet and the pitcher. "Thank you both. I mean it."

Iona inclines her head just a little, allows herself a smile. It's as close to an apology as she'll get, at least in front of His Majesty, and it's better than nothing. At the very least, Lady Elissa's clearly managed to apologize; Iona can't fault her for using all the tools at her disposal. She can only pray that it won't lead to a broken heart or three—she'll have to ask Amethyne—but for now, she thinks it may even be good.

Certainly, Lady Elissa is smiling again.

It seems a very long time, since Lady Elissa has smiled.

"You're welcome, Lady Elissa," Iona says, gentle. "Please try not to work through the night. Both you and His Majesty require rest. Now, if you'll excuse us?"

"Of course," Elissa says, smile turned wicked around the rim of the water goblet. "I promise I won't keep him up all night."

Iona is not even going to grace that with a reply. There's no point. It will only devolve into Lady Elissa digging in her feet and grounding herself against King Cailan, and then Iona will have to explain to Seneschal Bran that Lady Elissa has _no desire_ to marry the Viscount's son, and also she may or may not eventually be Queen of Ferelden.

(Andraste knows she's done it more times than she wants to think about. Iona is a good person who does not deserve this. She liked being a maid better, but no one else in this castle can keep Lady Elissa from running herself ragged. These are her burdens, and this is her life.)

Instead, she drops into a fluid curtsey, then turns on her heel and heads for the door with

the other girl at her elbow. Cailan watches the pair of them go, a little stunned. Iona is a flash of gold, Shianni a crimson after-image, and then the door clicks closed behind him.

Maker's breath.

That woman is _frightening_.

Of course, that does leave the quandary of Lady Elissa, and supper, and apparently staying up all night. Cailan's not quite sure how he's supposed to eat, given that she's sitting on him. He drops his chin to her shoulder again, decides that probably flirting will scare her off and then he'll have a moment to get his head back on straight.

"How do you know it won't be _me_ keeping _you_ up all night?" he asks, blithe. "Are you sure it's a good idea to put ideas in my head?"

"Depends on what those ideas are," she responds lightly, pours a second goblet of water and sets it aside for him. She should really find a chair. The smell of saffron wafts up from the risotto and—and the soup! How did Iona find the recipe for _that_? Neither one will be easy to eat sitting where she is.

"Most of them involve trying to figure out how to eat without moving you," Cailan says. He can reach around her, but it's _awkward_ —he's too far from the table with her sitting like this, but she's a little bundle of warmth and sweet-smelling hair, and he's not at all inclined to the thought of her moving away. "You may have to feed me."

Elissa slips easily enough away from him, casts a look back over her shoulders. "That would make working too difficult, so you're on your own there."

Disappearing into the growing shadows of the library, she returns with another chair, sets it down beside him. It's cold without him so close, but that's what the food is for. She settles in with a small bowl of soup and a collection of letters she hasn't had the bravery to start yet. Surprisingly, nothing from Denerim. She'd been expecting that, sooner rather than later, once the ragtag crew of Tabris elves came and told her what had happened.

"By the way," she says, quiet because on the list of things he probably should have known sooner, this one is awfully high up. "Vaughan Kendalls is dead. Has been for a couple of months now."

"Thank the Maker, means I don't have to order his execution and offend Urien—hold on, what did he do?"

"Kidnapped a bunch of elven women from the alienage mid-wedding," she says, still not looking at him. "Assaulted one of them when a couple of the men from the alienage broke in and freed the others. One of those captured woman, it turns out, is rather gifted with knives. She decided to relieve Lord Vaughan's shoulders of his head. From what I understand, several other young noblemen lost their lives in the fight."

"Good," Cailan says, then stops, shakes his head. "Maybe I shouldn't be so relieved, but I hated him. Urien never did anything about him, not even when—" he breaks off, shakes his head again. "He terrified the maids, I couldn't stand it."

"You'll have to excuse me if my primary concern is that Highever's alienage lost two of her own in this incident," she says, thinks of the way there had been old fury still shaking Soris' body as he told her what had happened. He'd been the only one even _capable_ of talking about it. Elissa doesn't mention this, won't, just as she won't mention the cold anger and relief that had flooded her own system when she saw the haunted expression in Iona's eyes at the sound of that man's name. "Both came from rather prominent families, and that the arranged marriages not only fell apart before they could occur, but that they are both now dead has raised some issues for our hahren."

"I'll have to do something about that. The alienage in Denerim needs, Maker, I don't even know, it's been a mess since as long as I can remember," Cailan pinches the bridge of his nose. "The guard is supposed to keep it safe, but what do I know, honestly."

"Perhaps look into why your guard isn't doing anything?" she responds, pushes some of the food towards him. "We can talk about this later. Hahren Sarethia has been asking for an audience since news reached her and it might do you some good to see Highever's alienage."

Cailan takes a bite of the rice, chews, thinks it over. Loghain has the guard keep the alienage under tight watch; he's not been inside the high walls in a very long time. "What's it like, here?"

"The alienage?" Elissa asks, poking a bit of fish around in her soup. "Not much different than the rest of the city. The vhenadahl stands in the middle, casts the whole thing into shadow, but there's a proper garden around it. The center square is mostly shops and places like the Chantry, school, library, things like that. Housing is down side streets. The whole thing is in one of the lowest parts of the city, so it's fairly isolated, but it's peaceful for it. Craftsmen have their workshops closest to the water. Surely Denerim's isn't too much different."

She doesn't say that she knows _exactly_ what Denerim's alienage is like. Has heard more than a few horror stories from Sarethia when Highever's population suddenly grew by a few refugees. Because, oh, they are refugees if even half of what they tell her about the King's City is true. Given the complaints of the herbalists and healers about the conditions these people are in upon arrival, she's inclined to believe she's only been given half the truth.

Cailan grins crookedly. "Denerim's alienage riots no less than three times a year, though no one ever told me why. I can't imagine they're anything alike."

"I was being sarcastic," she says, leans back in her chair. "If it's any consolation, I suspect there will be fewer riots with the Kendalls boy dead."

"Urien's going to be a _nightmare_ ," Cailan mutters. The Arl of Denerim cared little for his son, and Cailan only knows this because he _vividly_ remembers Vaughan announcing that because his father didn't care, he could do whatever he wanted. But a death is a different thing—Urien is without an heir.

Oh, Maker, the nobles are going to have a fit.

"Just don't tell me who it was," Cailan tells her, pushes his plate away to give himself space to _thunk_ his forehead down against the tabletop. "They can't get mad at me for what I don't know. Plausible deniability, and all that."

"You'd have to fight me, anyway," Elissa says, blithe. The soup is amazing, far better than anything Nan ever made, but maybe that's just her mood making it taste better. A chance at dismantling Denerim? Yes, please! "All of those involved now work for me. And didn't Arl Urien go to Ostagar?"

"Congratulations," he says, dryly, "if you're trying win an award for making my life harder than it needs to be, you've done it, you've won, you can stop now. Yes, he went to Ostagar. With my luck, he'll come back and then try to raze Denerim to the ground."

"But it's so much fun!" she grins, wicked and brilliant. She leans over enough to swipe a piece of bread off his plate. "From the sound of it, the Arl of Denerim was going to be lacking an heir one way or another, so I don't see what the problem is. You'd still be facing this issue, and you haven't even started on the Gwaren situation," but he looks absolutely miserable and that just won't do. Elissa sighs. "I'll help, so long as you're in Highever. We've still got some time to sort all this out."

"At least _someone's_ amused," he says, runs a hand through his hair. His fingers stick in the braids holding it back and he grimaces. Damn, there'll be knots in the morning if he doesn't take them out now.

He sets about pulling his hair free, trying very hard not to think about _the Gwaren situation_ , as she so delicately put it. What in the Maker's name is Loghain _doing_? And Anora in Amaranthine… Maker, he needs to get on talking to the Revered Mother…

"I've been dealing with this since I was fifteen and my parents decided that experience in diplomacy would help me make a good match," she says, gentle. "Of course, that's to be taken with a grain of salt. I am twenty and still unmarried."

He grins, a little wry. "And I'm twenty-five and I've just been left. You're doing better than I am, that's for sure."

"You don't come with a price," she smiles, though it does not reach her eyes. She reaches for the letters, shuffles them around for the notebook she spent all last night preparing. It _thuds_ on the table beside his plate. "There have been offers. Most ridiculous. It's been annoying trying to sort out the legitimate requests from offers of marriage alliances that do _nothing_ for Highever."

"I never liked that notion," Caila says, reaches over to help her sort through them. "The bride price. What do you do if you fall in love with someone who can't pay it? Maybe the Chantry has it right, and love matches make for better marriages in the long-term—hold on, that's Teagan's writing—?"

He pulls the letter in question towards him, glances up at Elissa in question. "Do you mind if I open this?"

"Go ahead," she frowns, pulls the book towards her to find a couple of other letters still at the back. "I thought we'd gotten every letter opened and sorted. Must have missed a few."

Cailan slides a knife beneath the wax seal. Yes, that's his uncle's writing, and this is…

"Oh, _Maker_ ," Cailan breathes, eyes gone wide as he reads through it. "Teagan, _why_."

"I'm not marrying him," Elissa says, not looking away from the sixth outrageous request from an Orlesian duchess trying to marry off her very pretty but still dimwitted son. "Too old."

"No, it's not—" Cailan sets the letter down, pinches the bridge of his nose. "My uncle fancies himself a matchmaker, Elissa, I'm so sorry."

She scoffs, tosses the Orlesian letter aside. "The idea of my marrying anyone in Ferelden was rejected long ago. Unless Dimitri Pentaghast or Spiros Van Markham has decided to recruit him, I fail to see what matchmaking he could do. Though, Dimi wouldn't need help, so forget I mentioned him."

"He suggested _me_ ," he says, closes his eyes. Months, maybe _years_ of planning. Teagan, you rat bastard. "He mentions Anora—he knew she was leaving. They must have been planning it for months, I'm going to kill them both, I don't know why they didn't just…"

Elissa looks up at that. "I'm sorry, _what_?"

"You might want to read it," he sighs heavily. "Then we'll _both_ have reason to kill him."

"Please don't kill him. He's been too helpful in repairing relations between Highever and Ferelden. Trade with the Bannorn wouldn't be nearly as good as it is without him," she says, takes the letter from him. It says… surprisingly logical things. Of course, this was written to her and not to the King. Bann Teagan knows her well enough to know what works and what doesn't. Still, it's _Ferelden_. "He does make some good points, I'll give him that. It's still bad form, though."

It's understandable bad form. Teagan's connected enough to know what's been said about her recently, about what her marriage would mean for trade in the Waking Sea. It's why she can't seem to escape the attempts at setting her up with the Dumar boy.

(Which is a shame. Saemus is a sweet boy, really he is, and he's growing up to be a good man. They even have quite a lot in common. Namely a shared interest in men.)

"Welcome to what life is like for a noblewoman," she says, nudges his supper towards him again. "I don't know what it's like for the women in Ferelden, but for those like me, this is our norm until an alliance is made, for better or for worse."

"I am _so sorry_ ," he says, fervently, eyes glazed over. "That's—that's _mad_."

"Perhaps," Elissa sighs, spears a bit of salad with a fork. "Don't be sorry, though. You're not the first married man someone's tried to suggest and I doubt you'll be the last. The inclusion of the first wife is a bit odd. Usually don't see that outside of Orlais, and usually in those cases the first wife would still be involved in the marriage. Orlesians. Weird bunch."

"Not going to be married for long," Cailan says, cheerfully ignores the rest of the sentence. He's not going to go there, it's a terrible place to be. "So who knows, I'll probably end up having to go through it all over again."

"Good luck with that," she says, genuinely kind of means it. "It's a rough place to be if you're one of the poor people who actually has to have an heir. At least if you're a woman. I have no idea what the eligible women are like. If you'd like, I can ask for a list."

Cailan smiles at her, eyes tired. "Thank you, it would help."

"Don't thank me yet," she pokes his shoulder with the blunt end of her spoon. "I have no idea what a king's choices are, but if they're anything like mine, you'll be doing your damndest to avoid marriage."

"Tried that already, it didn't work out," he says, exhales as sudden fear clutches at his throat, the old half-longing-half-terror surging up to swamp him. His father, Alistair, Anora—Maker, why can't anything ever be _simple_. "I need an heir."

Elissa takes a bite of bread, keeps it in her mouth to stop her from saying the things she really, really shouldn't: that because of Howe's treachery—a treachery that was in fact far too intelligently planned for someone as boorish as Rendon Howe—Highever is currently without an heir. If Fergus is lost as well, at that disaster that is Ostagar, then there is only her and she will be in the same position the King is in rather sooner than later.

Which creates a monstrous headache, given that the most promising potential matches she currently has include a young duke from Orlais and the Pentaghast most likely to be King of Nevarra. Neither one would give Highever a suitable heir.

Life is easier when she doesn't have to worry about this. Life is so much easier when she can just focus on keeping Highever strong and healthy and not have to consider the impacts her potential marriage would have on trade throughout the Waking Sea, nor what it would mean for her city's future.

There's no need for her to marry if she's the aunt of the future Teryn. Fergus was supposed to secure the line of succession. That was his job. Strengthening Highever is hers.

She sighs, and thinks it's maybe time to take Howe's head down from the harbour. The skull would make a nice decoration for the harbourmaster's office, maybe. Or maybe the city gate, there to greet anyone approaching from Ferelden as a sick reminder of what happens when people dare to betray her city.

"You need a stable kingdom first," she tells him. "An heir will only help the future. If Ferelden falls before then, there's no need for any heir."

"Cheerful," he says. He's lost his appetite, not that he really had one in the first place. He pushes the plate away again, reaches for another one of the letters. There's still work to do, and even though his eyes feel like they're full of sand, they need to get through at least a few more tonight. He needs to write Viscount Dumar, find the Fereldan refugees someplace safe in Kirkwall long enough that the Wardens will be able to end the Blight, then get them home—that'll take ships and more gold than he likes to think about, Maker, it's a good thing Orzammar's willing to pay through the nose for their salt.

Elissa sighs and fixes a second bowl of soup, tries to get more broth than anything else. It's still warm, which is good, and she places it against his hand. "At least try the soup. Iona will kill me if you don't eat something and you're no good to me if you run yourself ragged."

"Do I have to?" he asks.

"Yes," she says, pushes all of the papers away from him. "Eat and you can have the letters back."

"You're the one who keeps on about me not being responsible," Cailan grumbles. The soup is good, spicy-sweet and creamy, but when his stomach's in knots like this he can't _eat_ , much less keep anything down. Throwing up is an unpleasant sensation, and not one he's fond of repeating.

"If you can't take care of yourself, then there's no way you'll be able to take care of anyone else," she says, sighs. Elissa reaches over and brushes a lock of gold behind his ear. She's finding she's got a growing desire to see Denerim and all its nobles _burn_. The King is not an idiot. Not at all, and the number of things he just doesn't know is staggering. None of this will do, shouldn't have been done, not when he _is not an idiot_. "You have the potential to be a good king, you just haven't had a chance. Now you do. Just try to stomach something, okay?"

"That might be the nicest thing you've said to me," Cailan grins at her.

"I'm not a nice person," Elissa says, still quiet. "Never forget that."

"I don't think I could even if I tried," he says, reaches over to tug on one of her curls. No, she's not _nice_. She's vicious and smart and _fun_ , mean and sharp in turn with a tongue in her head that would send darkspawn running for their lives, but not nice. Never _nice_.

Cailan thinks he likes her, regardless.

"If you eat, I might even be willing to move somewhere more comfortable," she teases, really thinks of how vast this library is and how cold it grows with shelves bare of all books slowly being swallowed by the night. Somewhere warmer and brighter sounds _divine_.

"Willing to move where?" Cailan asks, reluctantly stirs his soup. Elissa's tiny maid will kill them both if he doesn't eat something; at the very least, that's the vibe he gets from her, strange and motherly and exasperatedly fond. "If you want to go outside, you're on your own. I'm too tired to get yelled at by the guard again, I had enough of that last night."

"No, not outside," she muses, "though if we get through enough tonight, you might be able to convince me to show you around the grounds tomorrow. Tonight I was thinking maybe clean up the dishes, take them to the kitchen, see if there's still any cake, and then settle in somewhere warmer to work."

"Cake?" Cailan perks up. "Cake and _warmth_? Alright, I'm sold, I'll have some soup."

He downs the broth as fast as he can. Probably later he _will_ get sick for it, but better that than staying in this great cavern of a place, endless empty shelves and cool dark dusk in through the windows. It's lovely in daylight, but now it just seems… sad.

"There," he says, spoons himself the last few drops. "Are you happy, now?"

"You take some and I'll take the rest," she grins, setting up the tureen and risotto, leaves the bread and salad (she'll have to ask that that salad not be repeated, but not tonight). "Then we'll double back for the letters and find someplace better to work."

Elissa doesn't bother to check if he's following her. The kitchen is on the same level as the library, the lowest, closest to the ground. This is supposed to be the portion of the castle used to receive guests, all shiny and clean. Now it's silent as a tomb. The journey from library to kitchen takes her past windows that shimmer with light reflected from her city. There's something magical about it, beautiful enough it grabs her heart and won't let go. It takes the edge off the cold loneliness of the silent castle, of being so small in an empty place so _big_.

Which, admittedly, is probably why she likes the kitchen. It's warm, always warm, from colours to fire to the very smells. She sets her dishes down on the table; Iona will likely be through soon to fix tea or warm milk for little Amethyne.

Now, to find the cake…

Cailan watches Elissa move around the kitchen with the familiarity of someone entirely used to doing exactly what they please. She's at home here, something relaxing in her shoulders as she goes, and he realizes, a little incredulously, that she's been near as tense as he has this whole damn time. She's just hidden it much better.

 _It's too bad she doesn't want my job_ , he says to himself, almost laughing at the bitter irony of it. _She'd be much better at it than I am_.

In the warm light of the kitchen, Cailan remembers that she is lovely, all dark hair and darker eyes, the sharp point of her chin and the long line of her neck. He goes still all over—Chamberlain would _kill_ him for this next thought—but she holds herself tall and assured and he thinks, a little blasphemously, that she couldn't look more like a queen.

"Here it is!" she's smiling like a fool, happy and holds the tightly wrapped cake lightly. Elissa turns to find the King—well, that's an odd look. He's looking at her with an intensity she hasn't seen before, maybe lost somewhere deep in thought.

No concern of hers. Not right now. She can deal with whatever it is that's caught him later. Right now, there is cake, and she quickly unwraps it, finds a heavy black pan and sets it by the fire to warm. The kettle too; tea would be nice if they're going to be working late. "Anything else sound good?"

"Is there more of that honey?" he asks. It had been very nice, weird and frothy like cream but sweet. It's easier to think of that than to know what her face becomes when she smiles; she burns so brightly Cailan thinks he might go blind just looking at her. "That was good, and it'll be nice with tea."

"The honey? Of course," Elissa laughs, pulls the jar down from the shelf. It's right by the tea, easy to reach, and she grabs the tea too for good measure. "I meant fruit or something like that."

"Nah," he says, grins at her. She has to stand up on tiptoe. That's adorable. "I'm alright. Can I help with anything?"

She hums a little, pauses in dumping a spoonful of fragrant black leaves into the teapot. "Can you keep an eye on the cake? Don't let it burn."

"I can manage that, I think," Cailan chuckles, and turns to tend to the stove. The cake browns slowly, just like toast but sugared, and he flips it so that both sides will be warm. Cailan only narrowly avoids burning his fingers, but he figures it'll probably be worth it—cake warm on both sides far outweighs the relatively-small grievance of burnt fingertips. The kettle's boiling in the background, piping a merry little song and a thin fissure of steam. The fire crackles, and suddenly everything's too warm, too close, Elissa's breathing just as constant as the changing of the seasons.

He takes the pan from the stovetop so that the cake doesn't burn, and then he has to sit so that he doesn't shake himself to pieces.

Elissa reaches out, again brushes gold behind his ear. She steps away long enough to find a tray, doesn't think about the fact that she is far more familiar with this kitchen than any noble should be. It's a dark train of thought, back to seeing Nan in a pool of blood and her world on fire, the long nights after when it was more comfortable to stay here and sort out what little survived, arranging and rearranging this kitchen until Iona finally came and put a stop to it.

So she repeats what Iona did and pours a cup of tea, spreads honey across the cake, and puts it in front of him, not saying a word.

Cailan will never know why he does it, but it's so easy to wrap his arms around her and press his face into her side. It's a little simpler to breathe, like this: the warmth of her skin is a blanket, the thrum of her heart an anchor, and slowly, slowly, the shaking stops.

When he comes back to himself, Elissa's combing her fingers through his hair, and the tea's gone cold.

"Shit," he murmurs, voice crackling. "Sorry."

"It's okay," she says, more hums, really. "Nothing's wrong. We don't have to work anymore if you're not up to it."

"I feel like I've just been run over by a herd of druffalo," he murmurs. Holy Maker, he thinks he could sleep for a week, or a month, or a year. He thinks he could sleep for the rest of his life, and it still wouldn't be enough; the shaking's stopped, and for the first time in what feels like forever, everything inside of Cailan is perfectly still. It's like he's been wrung completely dry, nothing of the awful tremble that's been building and building in his stomach for the last several days left.

It's very quiet between them. Cailan's thankful, for that.

"Your world's gone crashing down," his hair is cool against her fingers, soft and smooth, "it's just catching up to you. This is probably all very strange for you, and I'm maybe not the best person to be helping anyone."

Cailan cracks a tired grin at her, pulls her down so that she settles comfortable in his lap, knees on either side of his hips. "You've been better about it than you probably should have been. I've been an arse."

"And I'm a bitch, so we're even," she grins. There's a warning at the back of her mind, something about Iona and kitchens and reminders that the guest wing is just down the hall, but she pays it no mind.

"Wish you wouldn't say things like that about yourself," he mumbles. There's sleep fast approaching, and the words come out a little slurred. "You're not, you know."

She smiles, presses a kiss against his forehead. "Oh, yes I am. I can provide references if you need it. Now, shall we find somewhere more comfortable?"

"Don't want 'em," he says, fleeting disappointment that she's moved out of reach, but he's so _tired_ , he's never been this tired in his whole life, he just wants to find somewhere dark and quiet where he can wrap himself around her and rest for a while. "M'gonna be useless, s'rry 'Lissa. Need t'sleep."

She laughs. Maker, he's worse than _Fergus_. "Come on, then. There's a perfectly good bed just down the hall."

This time she does make sure he's following along, though it's really more of a shuffle. Was that night spent on the floor of the solarium the first real rest since leaving Ostagar? Elissa is going to have to set Iona on him; that elf knows how to guilt even the most stubborn soul into taking better care of oneself. There is a short flight of steps up to the guest room. It's a minor concern, but he makes it up them just fine.

Unsurprisingly, almost, because this is her life now, she finds the guest room that she had taken to sleeping in ready to go. The bed is made, the fire lit, and based on the collection of weedy flowers in the cream pitcher sitting on the desk, she's fairly certain that little Amethyne is going to turn out to be her mother's daughter through and through.

If anything, it just makes Elissa tired. One Iona is enough. Two is just one too many.

Cailan very nearly collapses on the bed. It's vaguely horizontal and not made entirely out of hornets; if he wakes up dead, he won't even really be surprised. He reaches out to catch Elissa's wrist and drag her down next to him, because even delirious as he is, he knows she's just going to go back and continue working.

She's going to run herself ragged, silly pretty restless girl that she is.

"Sleep, 'Lissa," Cailan murmurs, tucks her into his side, manages to sleepily toe off his boots. "Sleep now."

She squirms around until she has one hand free enough to poke him in the side. "At least let me take off _my_ boots."

He releases her, enough that she can slip off the bed and pull her boots and jacket off. Waistcoat too. She's woken up with that thing digging into her side because it's twisted around in her sleep one too many times. "There's still a lot of work to do, I hope you know."

Cailan makes a muzzy sound, burrows deeper into the bed. He's somehow managed to pull the covers out from underneath him, struggled through a sleep-heavy haze to make room for her next to him. "I know. Bu'—t'morro'. Sleep."

"Suit yourself," she says, because the thought of the handful of letters left is tempting enough to make her want to go fetch them from the library. "You did put out the candles in the library, didn't you?"

He makes an assenting noise. Oh, Maker, he's too tired for this, why won't she _rest_? "'Lissa," Cailan croaks, "c'mere. You need t'sleep, too."

"That's based on the idea that I'm tired," she says, and tries not to think about how the sight of him curled up on the bed, gold splashed across the pillows, makes her want to go grab a robe and a bottle of honey wine. That was a good night, working in just her her smallclothes and robe, sweet wine on her tongue. It had taken the edge off the worst of the letters.

Elissa shakes her head, dislodging the memory. It's just the way his hair shimmers like the wine when the firelight dances off it. Nothing more. "It'll be so nice to start a day with only that day's letters to deal with."

"It'll be nic'r if we're not grouchy and s'hausted," he half-slurs. Cailan reaches for her, because he's tired and he can't _help_ it. He just wants her to stop for a little while, and fine, if that means she goes to sleep in her own room, that's what it means. But even sleep-deprived and on what feels very like a hangover, he knows that if she leaves, she won't sleep tonight. "'Lissa, _please_. I'll w'rk s'long as you want. T'morro'."

She sighs, wanders over to him. "You realize that I stay here that you'll wake up to a barely dressed woman in the morning."

When he says nothing, she shrugs. It's really just a whim, what she does next. It's more logical to go and wrap up the letters, but he _did_ promise her that he'd work as long as she wants. So Elissa does what she would normally do to prepare for sleep: she strips off her clothes until she's in nothing but her smallclothes and crawls over him, settles under the covers.

If anything, his reaction in the morning should be worth it.

Cailan hooks his arm around her waist, pulls her close and tucks his face into her hair. She's soft and small and warm, smells like sugar and skin and something strangely metallic, blood and honey.

"Sleep, 'Lissa," Cailan repeats around a yawn. "Sleep."

And then he closes his eyes, and falls into the void.

—

Beth is sitting on a swing.

It's a very nice swing, all things considered: it's a sturdy plank of wood, hanging from a high branch of what must be a _very_ old tree by solid links of chain, and it looks out on the Waking Sea. Painted white and tucked away from the main courtyard, it seems like a secret place where a person can go if they don't want to be found.

And that's precisely what Beth wants, right now. She needs to think, and she needs to _not_ be interrupted.

Supper was terrible. Not the food, no, the food was wonderful and Beth thinks if she stays in Highever she may get fat as a spoiled cat. No, what was terrible was her _brother_ , and her _sister_ , and the way they behaved like _wild animals_.

It's not like they don't know better! Carver and Mari are usually _polite_ , at the very least. But tonight they were at each other's throats. And not just each other's, poor Alistair's, too! He'd looked so bewildered when Carver had started in on him, and then even _more_ bewildered when Mar had defended him!

(And that was odd enough on it's own; Beth has very few memories of Mari defending someone who wasn't either family or mage or both. Mari is a good person, but she's not fond of having to save the world. Beth doesn't ask about it—once upon a time, her sister disappeared, and the woman who re-appeared in her place three years later was Mari-but-not. She was colder-eyed and older, and sometimes she said things that made fifteen-year-old Beth wonder if her sister wasn't dead, after all. That's three years past, now, and there are still days that Beth has to adjust.)

Beth sighs aloud, the swing's chain-links jangling merrily beneath her grip as she pushes herself back and forth. She's still got one of the seashells tucked into the pocket of her skirt. It's the first one she found, the grey with the pink-gold interior, and she thinks of the sunshine and the saltwater as she pulls it out, tilts it back and forth to catch the last dregs of the sunset.

It had been such a beautiful day. Ha, seashell armour and crab people, all the bad jokes and how content she'd been to just—just sit and laugh, with Alistair, how it hadn't taken anything at all. It had been so _easy_ , is the thing, and now she sits here holding her shell holding the sunset, and now it's _not_ easy. It's all complicated in her head and confused, because he hadn't looked at her _once_ all through supper.

She'd thought they were _friends_.

But maybe not.

She sighs aloud again, and pushes off the swing, tucking the shell back into her pocket as she goes. Highever's gardens are huge sprawling things, long meandering walkways lit with funny little lanterns hanging on spindly wrought-iron canes. She could take one of the lanterns, certainly, but it's not dark yet and really, Beth can create her own light if she truly needs it. For now, it's better to wander in the slowly-gathering twilight than to set her fists alight and catch the wrong kind of attention. She rounds a bend—

"Alistair?"

Well, there goes his train of not-thought. Duncan's tried, repeatedly, to teach him how to meditate and clear his head. It's just always been one thing or another and now, here in this quiet place where there's only the distant sounds of the city, most sound drowned up by the constant crash of waves against the cliffs, he'd thought _maybe_ he could finally do it.

But apparently it's not in the cards for him.

He blinks, tries not to think of the growing pain in his knees, looks up at Bethany. "Yes?"

"I—" she tilts her head at him. There's something wrong with his eyes. "Are you alright? I'm sorry, I hope I'm not disturbing you."

"No, it's fine," he says, slowly clambers up to stand. "I probably shouldn't be out here this late."

Beth smiles a little, sad and slow, shoulders coming up around her ears and her throat's weird and tight, though she doesn't know why. "Maybe not. I was just going for a walk, I wasn't—I'm sorry about Mar and Carver at supper. I'll try to keep them from being so awful, next time."

"It's fine, really," Alistair waves her off, doesn't say that he's already considered the option of taking meals alone, that it's not something he's a stranger to. If anything, eating with other people, and not around a campfire, is the oddity.

Beth smiles down at her hands. That's a dismissal, if she's ever heard one. And she wants to argue because it's _not_ fine, it's _not_ , but clearly he'd just been being kind earlier, the same way everyone else is kind.

One of these days, Beth is going to learn that friends don't stay, and she'll just stop trying.

She tips her face up to smile brightly at him. "If you're sure," she says, swallows around the lump at the base of her throat. "I'm—I think I'm going to finish my walk, Alistair. Sleep well. I am sorry for disturbing you, I hope you'll forgive me."

"You didn't," he says, brushes the dirt off his knees. The ghosts he'd been trying to escape are creeping back, a crawling sensation down his spine, across his skull, worse than any distant darkspawn and he just—he needs to be elsewhere. Soon. "Don't stay out too late, okay? Someone said it's been getting cold at night."

"I'll be fine," Beth shrugs. She turns and walks a little ways down the path and away. There are words clawing at her throat, because the last time he got like this had been after—after Lake Calenhad, and he'd watched the way she and Mar and Carver had slung themselves all over each other, a pile of limbs and exhaustion and _family_.

 _Oh_ , she thinks, and it clicks in her head, _family_.

"You know," she says over her shoulder, the corner of her mouth pulling up, "you should really talk to His Majesty. It might do you some good. I know it's not—easy, but… you might be a little happier. Just a thought."

"I—" he stops as soon as he starts. There's no easy way to explain this, he thinks, not to someone like her. She's never had to question how much it means to share blood with someone. For her, that bond is solid, always has been and always will be. There's never been any question over how much something like that actually matters, about whether or not there is any kind of bond that can exist between people who don't know each other.

Which is, in his experience, the crux of this. There isn't a bond. There is no relationship, no caring, _nothing_. Blood means nothing, unless it's darkspawn blood all black and poisonous. He's not a mage, certainly not a blood mage. This is just the red stuff in his veins that he was born with. It's not a link to any heritage, any sense of belonging in a world that he has never been a part of.

"There's no need for that," he settles on.

"Maybe not," Beth says. She breathes in, already walking away. "I'll see you tomorrow. Goodnight, Warden."

—

.

.

.

.

.

 _tbc_.

 **wren** : this was the chapter where i got punched in the face with love for alistair theirin and like two years later i am still pissed about it.  
 **alma** : would you believe us if we said we'd originally planned on alistair/f!mahariel and bethany/nathaniel?  
 **wren** : my god, i can't believe we actually thought that would be a good idea?


End file.
